A Would-be Reunion
by Lesera128
Summary: Set 6 months after Booth regains his memories from his life as Angel, Brennan is confronted in D.C. by the very thing from his past that she'd always feared when someone comes looking for the former vampire with a soul. Bones/Angel crossover. AU. Sequel to stories such as "Toe to Toe"-"Echoes True & False." Angel(us)-Booth/Brennan. Complete.
1. Part I: A Tale of Two Vipers

**A Would-be Reunion**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

**Summary: **Set six months after Booth regains his memories from his life as Angel, Brennan is confronted in D.C. by the very thing from his past that she'd always feared when someone comes looking for the former vampire with a soul. Bones/Angel crossover. Very, very AU. Sequel to "Toe to Toe," "Barging In," "Making Him Beg," "Comfort on the Edge of Reason," "The After Party," "The Price to Be Paid," and "Echoes True and False."

**Logistical Notes: **Although we've said it before, just in case people are wondering, for those who are familiar with Whedon-verse, this story assumes the events through the end of Angel's series finale ("Not Fade Away") and the comic-book "Angel: After the Fall" are canon. It ignores all other stories in the Angel chronology, including the BTVS Season 8 and Twilight storyline in the canon comics. For those others who are wondering, this story would be set roughly sometime during the first part of the second-half of season 4 of _Bones_.

**A/N: **Ladies and gents, welcome to this (finally!) the eighth of what will be a nine story cycle chronicling the lives of Angel(us)-Booth and the witch Temperance Brennan. As ever, if you stumbled across this series via this story for the first time while reading this chapter, if you're looking for your good ole canonical Booth and Brennan Bones' story, you'll be sorely disappointed as this piece is anything but. Translation: if you haven't read the prior 7 stories in this cycle, you will be utterly and woefully confused. Bewildered. Frustrated. Nothing will make any sense to you. We promise. However, if you have been sticking with us, we hope you're ready for another excellent ride. So, here we go!

**UNF** **Alert: **Warning... there actually is no unf alert for this first chapter. Yes, we know. We tricked you. But we promise there will be...eventually...and so leave it here as a reminder to you all...and us, of what's to come.

* * *

**Part I: A Tale of Two Vipers**

* * *

It hadn't been a good day thus far, and the more she thought about it, the more she was feared it would only get worse.

Dr. Temperance Brennan sat on the couch in her office at the Medico-Legal Lab of the Jeffersonian Institute in Washington D.C. She was half-attentively reading—scanning, really—an article in the latest spring volume of the _Journal of Physical Anthropology _that had come in her stack of correspondence and periodicals from the mailroom earlier that morning. She wasn't in a particularly positive mood. Her brow was creased with the subconscious ire she felt, having awakened in a foul mood for the fourth straight day.

She had a slight headache that she knew was from the heated exchange she'd had with Booth after she'd spent the majority of their lunch in the bathroom at the Royal Diner as opposed to sitting at their customary table sharing a meal as they'd originally planned. The ensuing discussion—which had ended with her partner and husband dropping her off in front of the Jeffersonian with a curt shake of his head and a vague 'whatever'—gnawed at her. She did her best to wonder when her relationship with Booth began to become somewhat bipolar as it had in recent months. On good days, Brennan knew she'd swear that she'd rarely had a better day in her centuries-long life. But, on the bad days...well, on the bad days she wondered how bad bad could be and whether it could possibly get any worse. As her head continued to throb, Brennan was almost certain that she was going to chalk _this _day in the column of proverbial bad days.

She knew her headache was indicative of tension and increasing stress levels, which she was in turn quite certain had caused her feet to swell. She tried to focus on the crisply starched pages of the journal she held in her hand, hoping she could get lost in the solace of anthropology for a few minutes and temporarily forget what had caused her to have the headache in the first place. Her plan worked for about twelve minutes.

By the time Brennan had finished reading the first article, and making mental notes about the author's findings that she would eventually write down for later analysis, she had just scanned the second article's abstract when she felt it start again. It started off as a dull ache. Knowing that if she didn't do something now to combat the initial onslaught that she wouldn't fit into her shoes when it was time to go home, she sighed once loudly and then gave in to the evitable. Setting the journal down beside her, she quickly kicked off her modest flats that were already a size bigger than she normally wore. Grabbing a pillow from the opposite end of the couch, she situated it on the coffee table. With one final grunt, she heaved her legs forward and placed them as gently on the pillow as she could until they were elevated at a point of measurement that corresponded to one that was higher than her heart as she reclined on the couch.

Grabbing the journal from beside her, Brennan stubbornly vowed to put the irksomely mild pain (and its larger cause) out of her mind. She was able to maintain that pledge for approximately seven minutes. Eventually, unable to get comfortable in her current position, she sighed in frustration again. She couldn't help herself as she scooted forward slightly on the couch and shifted her legs from where they were propped up on the coffee table. Glancing back down at her journal, she was able to read the second article in its entirety, although she knew she wasn't really reading it critically and would have to go back and reread it for a deeper analytical comprehension. As she glanced at the clock and saw that she'd had her feet elevated for approximately thirty minutes, despite the fact that she had a large pillow under her feet, when she peered over the edge of the journal, she could still see the tell-tale puffiness of her ankles that had caused her to kick off her black flats and wait to attempt to return to the lab platform until some of the swelling had subsided.

As if sensing the displeasure of her mother, the baby that she was carrying suddenly began to kick her in earnest. At not quite six months, Brennan was entering the end of her second trimester, and she was already becoming quite frazzled with the chaotic changes that her pregnancy had wrought in her body. Not a day had gone by in her pregnancy since she'd found out that she was going to have a baby when she wondered if she had control over _anything _anymore, and that stress had had a domino effect on her entire life, including her relationship with Booth. Unable to help herself, pursing her lips, she looked down at the tell-tale bump that was the source of a fairly regular thumping against the confines of her abdomen.

"Cut it out," she grunted at her stomach, her voice sharp and cutting. "I really mean it this time. Cease and desist in your excessive calisthenics, fetus." Glancing at her watch, Brennan then rationally continued, "It's only 3:30. You aren't supposed to be up and kicking for another three hours. Remember? Your normally scheduled routine stipulates that you prefer to be most active between 6:30 and 8:00pm with an encore performance between 9:30 and 11:00. And, since I haven't consumed any high-fructose, high-caloric desserts as the result of some irrational and idiotic craving—which I'm quite certain is related to the fact that your father scarfs down sugar like he expects Dixie to stop manufacturing five-pound bags at any moment, since I know the genetic material that I contributed to your DNA isn't responsible for that particular predilection of yours—you have absolutely no reason to be kicking me right now, so will you _stop _it?"

As if to mock her, the baby gave her a particularly strong jab in the left side that caused her to intake a sharp, swift breath. Once she gulped down several mouthfuls of air and had recovered, she scowled at the growing bump in the middle of her stomach. Jabbing her finger in the bump's general direction, she sighed.

"Oh, come on, now," she complained. "It's not like I'm not keeping my end of the bargain. I no longer consume caffeine. I'm imbibing an excessive amount of fluids to maintain hydration. I've eaten more legumes and nuts in the past five months cumulatively than I think I've ever eaten to make certain you receive enough protein. I'm making do with the gummy prenatal vitamins your father insists on buying me instead of the regular gel caps I prefer to take. I've even reduced my workload both in the field and the lab in addition to trying to sleep more and keep off my feet. So, all of that considered, since I've complied with my end of our symbiotic relationship, how about you do your part and cease and desist in kicking me in the spleen, please?"

Brennan waited expectantly for some type of response from her growing child. She didn't have to wait long for it when a response came in the form of another sharp jab in her gut. A foul curse escaped her lips as she gasped once again for breath.

She then scowled once more before she muttered, "Now that was just you being vindictive."

A shuffling in the direction of her door quickly drew Brennan's ire away from her ongoing disagreement with her child. She looked up to see who was disturbing the inner sanctum of her office that few people besides Booth and Dr. Camille Saroyan failed to venture into unless they had a very, _very _good reason. Brennan's eyes confirmed who her new visitor was at the same time her ears processed the vocal evidence of the person's identity.

"Who's being vindictive about what, sweetie?" Angela Montenegro said as she walked into Brennan's office carrying several thick manilla file folders in her arms. She paused once she just inside the door, leaning into one hip and tucking a lock of her wavy dark hair behind her ear. Unlike Brennan and the other Jeffersonian scientists, she sported neither a blue nor a gray lab coat, but instead wore a flouncy dress with a bright, purple, and lemon floral pattern and a spirited pair of strappy silver-colored sandals with two-inch kitten heels.

Nodding at her stomach, Brennan said with a slight amount of bitter snark in her voice, "The fetus."

Angela's eyes lit up at the mere mention her friend made of the baby. "Awww!" she said, coming forward to sit down next to Brennan on the couch, hastily discarding the stack of file folders on the coffee table. "You were talking to the baby? That's so sweet!"

"She's kicking me," Brennan complained, the grumpiness she felt clear in her voice as she spoke. "Hard. And, I don't like it."

"But, that's good, right, Bren?" Angela blinked at her**, **her slender eyebrow deeply arched as she couldn't help but smile at her friend, who seldom if ever waxed anything that even remotely resembled sentimental. _Who are you and what did you do with Bren? _the artist thought to herself. She pursed her lips, puzzled at Brennan's irritation, then shrugged and said, "I thought that the more active the baby was, the more healthy she is, right?"

Considering her best friend's supposition, slowly the forensic anthropologist conceded Angela's point. "Yes," Brennan sighed. "Obstetrical research does seem to show there is a correlation between regularly active fetal movement and many other things, such as full-term deliveries, healthy weight percentiles when the baby is born, along with increased lung capacity and high Apgar scores. But—"

"But?" Angela asked, when her best friend's voice trailed off, biting the inside of her lip to suppress a smile.

"But," Brennan continued, her brows furrowing and a scarcely audible growl of frustration rattling in the back of her throat as she pouted. She shifted her hips against the sofa cushion and sighed once more. "It's not her normal time to be active, and so I've concluded she's just doing it out of spite."

"Now, why would she do that, sweetie?" Angela asked. "She's just a baby. Babies can't be vindictive. They don't know how."

Shaking her head, Brennan contradicted her friend. "Usually I would agree with you, Ange. However, for reasons I won't go into at the present moment, I think it's fair to say that whatever this child will be, if nothing else, she will be quite advanced as compared to her peer group. So, no I don't put it past her to be vindictive at the mere age of—"

"Twenty-five weeks," Angela dead-panned. "Seriously, Bren?"

She arched an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side as she waited for her friend to respond and wondered if she would continue to act strangely as she had in the first few weeks of her unexpected pregnancy. Angela still vividly remembered the morning that Brennan ran off the forensics platform after suddenly turning a bit green around the gills during examination of a newly-arrived set of partially-decomposed remains, and after Angela chased her into the ladies' room, admitting that she was pregnant. _"Don't say it," Brennan had warned her in a breathless rasp as she crouched in front of the toilet in-between dry heaves. "I'm still not entirely sure I'm over the surprise, and I'm sure as fuck not ready to deal with anyone else's right now, so—just don't."_ As the weeks went on and Brennan's pregnancy became visible, the surprise wore off and her being pregnant with Booth's child began to seem to many at the Jeffersonian like yet another step in the natural progression of things. It certainly had felt that way to Angela, who was thrilled at the news even as she watched her friend groan wearily as she emptied out the contents of her stomach once again.

Angela blinked away the memory and made a face as she said, "Wait, why do you keep referring to the baby as a girl? Did you get your sonogram and find out the sex of the baby at your last appointment and didn't tell me?"

Slowly, Brennan shook her head. "No, indeed not. I've chosen not to learn the sex of the baby largely because Booth dared me that I wouldn't have enough self-control to hold off on learning the fetus' sex. As I wish to prove him wrong, I am thus exerting the superior self-control I have—" Brennan paused for a few seconds as a flash of an impromptu if not impulsive kiss on Halloween flashed in her mind and then she quickly dismissed it with a mental chide before she continued speaking. "—and not finding out if at all possible. However, since Booth says that it would be bad for the baby to be objectified as an 'it', I'm merely using female pronouns for ease of conversation at this point in time."

Angela considered Brennan's words for a minute and then nodded. "When the G-man has a point, Bren. I gotta admit, he has a definite point." The artist watched her friend as Brennan shifted on the couch. When the forensic anthropologist winced, Angela tilted her head as a slightly worried frown marred her beautiful face. "Do you feel any better?"

Exhaling slowly, Brennan nodded. "Yes, I find that keeping my feet elevated at an angle that is above the current position of my heart, the swelling decreases substantially. And, when the moderate edema that I'm suffering from as a result of my pregnancy gets worse because I've spent more time on my feet than I probably should, I have been making a concentrated effort to rest."

Nodding at her, Angela said, "I've noticed. And, just between you and me, Bren, I've got to admit, I'd be lying if I said that I haven't been worried about you. But, I think it's a really good that you're making an effort to try and take care of yourself."

Quiet for a minute, Brennan eventually nodded. "I promised Booth," she explained. "He's been very worried about me, especially since I ended up in the hospital during my first trimester due to the hyperemesis gravidarum I suffered from because of the fetus. He's trying very hard not be overbearing and smother me during my pregnancy. In return for that consideration, I've promised him that I would make a concentrated effort to listen to my body and not overdo things. That's why I'm not on the platform right now with Dr. Edison. I'd hoped if I'd elevated my feet, it would reduce the swelling to an acceptable level by the time Booth returns so that he won't complain too much when I go into the field with him later to interview Mrs. Annenburg." She paused for a minute before she took a breath and continued. "He said she might be willing to come into see us at the Hoover, but if not, that he was going to go see her at her house about Andrew Welton," Brennan said. "In either case, I feel strongly that this is one interview that he could benefit from having my assistance with..."

Her voice trailed off, and she shifted her hips against the couch cushion with a quiet grunt and a weary sigh as she struggled to find a position whereby she could keep her feet sufficiently elevated and support her aching lower back while still being able to comfortably read. Frustrated at her inability to strike such a balance, her brows furrowed into a frown and she breathed a long sigh.

"God, I hate this," Brennan grumbled in a plainly irritated way. "Even though I feel like the damn Hindenburg and look like it twice over, I really am _more _than capable of carrying out my duties and assisting with our casework and the ongoing investigation. It's not like I'm an invalid. I'm still useful and effective and —"

"And, you don't need to worry," Angela suddenly interrupted her friend as she leveled a knowing stare at Brennan..

Brennan blinked at her for a minute. Her brow crinkled as she cocked her head and asked, "Worry about what?"

Her chin jutting forward, Angela responded with a reassuringly kind smile, "Booth."

As soon as the artist said the word, clearly caught off guard by Angela's answer—a comment that for a moment made her sound more like Brennan's longtime friend and fellow witch Stephanie—it took the forensic anthropologist a minute to make sense of what she might mean. After struggling for a minute, Brennan finally answered. "I don't understand. What about Booth? What don't I need to worry about?"

"There's no reason for you to be jealous," Angela said as she folded her arms across her chest and then leaned back in the couch.

The artist raised her eyebrows and blinked her dark brown eyes very deliberately as she cocked her head to the side in an expression she reserved for only the most egregious examples of deliberate denseness on the part of very intelligent people. Brennan knew this look well, having been on the receiving end of a similarly teasing glare from Stephanie, albeit the latter's piercing green eyes probed deeper on account of having known the witch-turned-scientist for the better part of five centuries.

Angela looked at her friend and remembered how abrupt and withdrawn—and hell, downright snippy at times—Brennan had become in the year following the first case she'd worked with the jaw-droppingly handsome FBI agent. She'd seemed to mellow a little bit after Booth had started working with the Jeffersonian again on a more extended basis, especially after that Christmas quarantine that year, but still, Angela had noted something was a bit off about Brennan, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. Then Goodman had hired Camille Saroyan to be the head of forensics, and soon after, Booth had cozied up to Cam, who'd turned out to be an ex, and that's when the fireworks had really started. Angela wasn't really sure who fired the first shot in the Jeffersonian's version of the Confederates' attack on Fort Sumter, but there was no doubt that there was a not-so-civil war of wills being waged that first year between the pathologist and the anthropologist.

Although she never really let her hate flag fly, Brennan made no secret of the fact that she resented having been relegated to the role of a minion by a fast-talking woman who took to flirting with Booth less than thirty seconds after seeing him at a crime scene. It didn't take a particularly discerning eye to figure out that there was more to Brennan's fierce rivalry with Cam than professional egos. Brennan's disdain had a distinctly possessive and jealous air.

_Thank God that's behind us, _the artist sighed to herself as she watched a look of comprehension suddenly dawn on Brennan's face as she took Angela's meaning. _I was afraid if Cam kept things up that Bren was going to do something that would only require jello or mud to make it a show I could probably sell tickets to and make a pretty penny with_—_I mean, I never knew Bren could be so...possessive or vindictive when someone really pissed her off. _The artist remembered how she nearly had a heart attack after overhearing Brennan talking to Cam about a case involving a woman who ran off with another woman's husband and turned up six months later at the bottom of a ravine in suburban Maryland. _"From a biological standpoint, it's perfectly reasonable to use lethal force against a rival female who competes for one's mate's' affections," Brennan said in a very matter-of-fact tone. Then, with a wicked little smile, she added, "This particular woman just wasn't very smart about hiding the evidence. Of course, if it had been me, I would've done a much better job. If someone tried to run off with someone who belonged to me, well, suffice to say the authorities would never find her remains because none would be left after I was done with her to be left behind to find." _Everyone on the forensic platform suddenly got very quiet for a few seconds there as Brennan and Cam exchanged a look._ It makes me shiver just thinking about it, _Angela thought, a fleeting wince flashing across her face at the memory_._

The look quickly disappeared before Brennan nervously laughed and dismissed Angela's comment with a wave of her hand that was just a bit too casual. "I'm not worried about Booth, Angela."

Arching her delicate shaped thin black eyebrow at Brennan, Angela asked, "You're certain?"

Slowly, Brennan nodded. "Of course," she responded. "I'm _very _certain."

Nodding, Angela said, "Because, it's okay if you're not, Bren. I mean, I know that you two haven't been spending as much time at work as you had been before you got pregnant. But, like I said, just because he's been working with Cam on this case since she was so close to Andrew, I don't think you need to feel threatened, Bren."

Brennan considered the point for a moment. Not really surprised that Angela was picking up on her _something _being off in her recent behavior, because she was and always had been so intuitive, she finally shrugged her shoulders slightly as she pursed her lips before she replied, "I know that."

"You sure?" Angela asked again, with her critical stare never breaking from where she studied Brennan's curious gaze. "Because, just in case it isn't obvious, he's so in love with you, it's not even funny."

Brennan's eyes narrowed and she glanced out the window of her office and directed her gaze towards Cam's office and the autopsy suite on the other side of the lab. She felt the bile rise in her throat as she remembered her first sustained interaction with Camille Saroyan.

_She hadn't been on the scene of the fatal train derailment two minutes when the doe-eyed coroner came along holding a severed arm and barking out orders to the first-responders to find its owner. _

"_Stan!" she called out with natural authority in her voice. "I need some gauze. Danny? You don't find the owner of this in the next ten minutes, he'll bleed to death. Starting…" She pressed the chronograph on the severed limb's wrist watch before she emphatically finished in a clipped voice, "Now." _

_Brennan watched her look up and saw a flicker of familiarity in Cam's gaze when her eyes met Booth's. _

"_Seeley," she said breathlessly as a smirk hung from her bright red lips.._

"_Camille," Booth replied, a certain tightness in his voice as he bounced on the balls of his feet, strangely unnerved by being in the presence of his old friend and former lover, Cam, and his partner, who he'd been silently smoldering for since they first met two years earlier. He swallowed and wiggled his boots in the dirt, then gave the coroner a faint smirk. _

"_Don't call me Camille," the coroner retorted as his smirk turned into a genuine smile that Brennan immediately recognized as one that Booth only saved for people who knew him very, __very__, well._

_Brennan's suspicions were confirmed when the smile was followed by the emergence of a tell-tale playfully bright twinkle in Booth's eyes, even as his voice remained tense and formal. "Don't call me Seeley," he said. He looked at his partner and then to the coroner and said, "Dr. Brennan, Dr. Saroyan. You two know each other, huh?"_

_Brennan shook her head slightly. "No," she answered with a puzzled look on her face. _

_The woman did look vaguely familiar, but she wasn't sure from where. By the way she was barking out orders to the first responders, and the fact that Booth had referred to her as "doctor," Brennan quickly surmised that the attractive woman was a coroner. She narrowed her eyes and let her gaze rake up and down the coroner's form, clad in a fitted, casual black jacket and snug black trousers that flattered her curvy hips. Noting that Cam's bust was substantially smaller than Brennan's own, she wondered what Booth saw in her that clearly piqued his interest—since it was obvious that Booth and Cam knew each other in more than just a professional capacity. _

It can't be her tits,_ she thought with a smirk. She knew that his lips and nipping teeth had been drawn to her own bosom for a century and a half, and clearly the coroner had less to offer in that regard, so it must be something else. _Maybe she's good with her hands...or her mouth? _Bringing her eyes back up to Cam's face, she saw her bright, glossy, rose-colored lips and wondered if the other woman liked to suck men off, which sort of thing Brennan knew most men liked, but which Brennan herself had done only once in all the years she'd shared a bed with the man who stood next to her._

_Cam's eyes swung between Booth and Brennan a couple of times before she smiled faintly and said, "No."_

_Booth's brows flew up and he muttered, "Uh-oh."_

_Camille Saroyan shifted immediately and seamlessly back into incident-response mode as she turned to Brennan and said, "Dr. Brennan, I'd like you to check out the automobile this train hit. It's probably what caused the derailment."_

"_Accidental?" Booth asked, scribbling something on his notecards. _

"_NTSB guy says the train struck the car at least 200 yards from the nearest access," Cam said with a slight shrug of her shoulders before she waited a beat to see if Booth had understood. She smiled when he immediately responded in kind._

"_Deliberate," the agent said with a knowing nod._

_The coroner glanced over her shoulder and called out in a completely random manner, "Eight minutes, Steve!" Then she turned back to Booth and explained, "Probably suicide." Her eyes narrowed and she turned to Brennan with a hard look. "Why are you still here, Dr. Brennan?"_

_Brennan felt her jaw tighten and every muscle in her body tense with disdain at the presumptuous way the coroner was speaking to her as if the she were some sort of hired lackey. She felt her temper bubble up inside of her chest and she wanted to tell this woman that her arrogance was mislaid, that however good a coroner she thought she was, she was a nobody compared to Brennan who was internationally regarded as being at the top of her field; that however smart she thought she was, Brennan was far, far smarter; and that whatever she thought she knew about Seeley Booth, and whatever history she had with him, she knew nothing—nothing at all—about the man he really was, or used to be. She took a short breath and pushed away such thoughts, despite how badly she wanted to blurt them out. _

"_Because I'm not a coroner," she snorted, "and I don't work for you?"_

_Cam blinked but didn't miss a beat. "You got that half right."_

_Brennan shot Booth a questioning look but before he could do more than grin faintly at the game of verbal tennis being played in front of him, a pair of firefighters walked past carrying a wounded man on a stretcher towards a waiting ambulance._

"_Got him, Cam!" one of the firefighters called out to her. "Still breathin'!"_

"_Thanks, Steve!" she said, carefully tucking the severed arm on the edge of the stretcher next to the wounded man's side. "Alright. Every survivor is one less person for me to autopsy."_

_Cam cocked her head to the side and gave Booth a long, appraising, head-to-toe look. She flashed her brow as a crooked smile broke across her lips. "You look good out of your suit, Seeley," she said in voice that was distinctly huskier than it had been just moments before. "But then, you always did."_

_She walked away, leaving Brennan to stare, her mouth slightly agape, as Booth watched her vanish into the crowd of firefighters, paramedics, and NTSB investigators swarming around the first-class car._

_Brennan instantly recognized Cam's move for what it was—a clear signal that she had engaged in an intimate relationship with Booth in the past, and in doing so, marking him as her territory vis-à-vis Brennan—and after her immediate response, a sharp flash of possessive anger, faded amid the cacophony of sirens and shouts and the dizzying pulse of flashing blue, red and yellow lights from the dozens of emergency vehicles, she felt a sickening lightheadedness overcome her. As she began to assess the remains in the scorched and shredded car that collided with the train and caused the derailment, she felt her pulse race and she could hear her voice waver as she rattled off her findings to Booth. _

He's mine, _she thought. _Not hers. Mine. He's a part of me, and I'm a part of him.

_Brennan didn't know who Camille Saroyan was or what she had been at some point in the past to Booth, but the doe-eyed coroner was nothing to him compared to her. He'd been hers for a century and a half, and watching him respond viscerally to the beautiful black doctor made Brennan hate her immediately. She shook her head and tried to focus on the task at hand, doing everything she could to ignore the waves of nausea that lapped at her as Cam's flirtatious words echoed over and over again in her mind._

The memory of the first time she had ever met Dr. Camille Saroyan slowly faded away as Brennan felt her friend's questioning gaze waiting for a response. Refocusing her steely blue eyes on Angela's concerned and questioning warm brown stare, she tried to reassure her friend. "I know that," Brennan repeated as she nodded. "Trust me, Angela. In all the time I've known Booth, he's faced far more tempting invitations to engage in illicit sexual liaisons from persons much more skilled and alluring than Dr. Saroyan—"

Brennan smirked as she remembered an off-hand comment the coroner had made once about not having a gag reflex and how that particular characteristic made the job of autopsying human remains—with all of the requisite sawing open of heads, dissecting livers, examining entrails and their contents, and so on—all much easier to do. Even without a gag reflex, she doubted Cam was anywhere near as skilled at fellatio as she was.

Brennan imagined that Cam, who was fierce and assertive in her working life, was probably a very competent lover, but she was fairly certain that the coroner's skills in bed were nowhere good enough to compare to the only other woman whose sexual technique had the ability to tempt this man on the scale that Brennan's could. She remembered her old friend Darla, and the way the elegant vampire had talked about the young Irish stallion she'd turned in an alley behind a tavern in Galway. Darla had a confidence, a style, a charm and an urbane sophistication that turned heads every time she walked into a room. It was no wonder, then, that the young, cocky Irishman had been so intoxicated by her that he'd allowed himself to be lured out of that tavern and into a dark alley where he might have been set upon by cutpurses or worse. Darla made sense, Brennan thought, but she'd never understood how Angel could have fallen for Buffy, a woman whose age, naivete, breathtaking inexperience and general lack of substance or depth made her a rare outlier among the women who had shared her partner's bed over the last two hundred years. Blinking away the unpleasant memory of the Slayer, she smiled as she recalled the many women that had come and gone in Booth's life—including all those whom he'd fucked, loved, and many other things in between when he was both Angelus and Angel—she felt a flush of warmth as she realized that out of all of those countless women, only _she _had lasted.

Feeling genuinely happy, Brennan was honest when she added, "I feel can say with complete honesty, Ange, I know I have absolutely no reason to doubt Booth's affinity, affection, and devotion to me. Just between us, I doubt if he would even be tempted for a split second even if Cam tried like she did last year. Aside from the fact that I know he's always been extremely attracted to me physically, and our sexual compatibility has remained _quite _satisfactory...even as the stages of my pregnancy have progressed—"

"And there's just the minor points that you're carrying his child, are his wife...and that he loves you—all there is in the world and more plus a scoop of sugar—that are keeping him in line, huh?" Angela said with a small chuckle as she interrupted her friend's explanation and finished the sentence for the forensic anthropologist. She then clucked her tongue as she asked, "Right, Bren?"

Brennan bit back a sigh of annoyance as she felt another stab of warmth flow through her body as she held Angela's gaze for a minute, nodded almost imperceptibly, and then looked away. The light in her office caught a faint sparkle that drew her eye to her hand. Glancing at the silver ring that she wore on her left hand, Brennan let her eyes skate across the twisted Celtic knot work of the setting that cradled a brilliant marquise-cut ceylon sapphire in its grasp. The dark blue stone twinkled back at her, and Brennan smiled once more as she added, "Indeed, I was just about to get to those more salient points."

"Uh huh," Angela said with an arched brow and a knowing, toothy grin, her eyes following Brennan's as her best friend's lips curved into a smile at the sight of the ring on her finger. She then nodded at the vase of fresh-cut daffodils that were sitting on the coffee table next to Bren's feet. "Hey, those daffodils are holding up pretty well. Haven't you had them for ...what, well—" The artist stopped for a moment as she said, "Wait, how long have you had those because...ummm, it seems like it's been awhile, hasn't it?"

Her smile uncharacteristically broadening, Brennan answered, "I've actually only had those flowers since Monday."

Making a face, Angela then asked, "Really? Because it seems like a lot longer." She stopped and then gestured at the vase of fresh-cut daffodils that were sitting on the coffee table next to Bren's feet. "So, are those from the Romance Ranger himself, I guess?"

"Yes," Brennan smiled**,** her cheeks flushing slightly as her gaze settled on the vase of flowers and her thoughts briefly fluttered back to the hundred other times he'd sent her such flowers over the century and a half since he'd begun courting her affections. She bit back a wider grin as she thought of how he had indeed made good on his promise to make up for all of the times he didn't send her flowers during the first two and a half years of their partnership because, while he knew she liked daffodils, his mystical amnesia kept him from understanding why.

"_One look at those pretty flowers, Bren, and you'll know I'm never far behind, or too far away, mmm?" _he'd told her with a cocky grin one evening when he'd arrived in her office doorway and caught her staring happily at the flowers that had been delivered early that morning. Then she remembered what he'd told her a century and a half before: _"You never know when I'll be comin', lass, so you best always be ready."_

"Is it just me," Angela's voice pierced through Brennan's reverie, "or, is he sending those things to you on a pretty regular basis?" she asked.

"Every Monday," Brennan answered with a soft nod. "Every Monday when I've come in to the lab, he's had a vase of two dozen fresh daffodils waiting for me on my desk. He's done it for several months since even before he found out I was pregnant, but he's been extra diligent since then to make sure he procures them for me each week. So, to answer your question, yes. He's been doing it on a fairly regular basis. Ever since just before Christmas, as a matter of simple fact."

"Wow," Angela said, clearly impressed as she did a quick mental calculation of how many bouquets of fresh daffodils that Booth had sent Brennan during the time span she had specified. When she realized just how many flower bouquets that was, and the cost involved for some who she knew had been thrifty with a dime before his unexpected marriage to Brennan, Angela nodded. "That's romantic, even for Booth. And, it must be costing him a small fortune."

Perhaps, at one time, she might've been surprised at seeing this side of Booth—his willingness to spend whatever part of his modest government salary was left after covering living expenses, child support and the twice-monthly contribution to his son's college fund on gifts for Brennan—but then again, when it came to her best friend and her partner, she'd come to expect the unexpected, and thus Booth's flower habit was just another in a long series of surprises. She remembered when she first found out that the two were more than 'just' partners.

_She would've been surprised, but after finding out about Booth and Brennan's impromptu nuptials almost by accident a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, Angela Montenegro had concluded that almost nothing would surprise her ever again when it came to her best friend's relationship with her partner and how she'd found out it had drastically changed from professional to very personal just a few months earlier._

_Angela had just finished a forensic reconstruction of an individual based on a partial skull and was walking towards Brennan's office with a copy of her computer-assisted sketch when she heard a loud male voice bellowing from inside the office. Her breath caught in her throat and she stopped a few feet away from Brennan's office door as she listened to the argument within._

"_...and, Tempe, I had thought, after all these years, that you'd finally got some sense in that beautiful skull of yours, honey, and finally figured out that you deserve better than that."_

"_Dad," Brennan sighed in a weary voice that Angela had rarely heard Brennan use outside of when she was conversing with one of her family members. "We've already been through this. It's my life, and it's my decision. You don't get a vote. I'm sorry you didn't get the memorandum."_

"_I can't believe it," Max Keenan grumbled. "I-I..." His voice cut off abruptly as he laughed darkly. "You know, it's one thing to sleep with him. I know that ship sailed years ago, so there's no point—"_

"_That's right, Dad," Brennan interrupted, her voice rising sharply. "You don't get a vote in who I date, who I sleep with or who I marry. You never have, and you never will, so just deal with it or turn around and walk right out that door, and maybe we can talk in a decade or two when you've come to your senses...just like you always do."_

"_But, don't you see, honey?" Max tried pleading again. "I can't...not with him. With anyone else __but__ him, I'd try. But...with him? I mean, Jesus, Tempe, he's dipped that nib of his in so many bottles of ink it makes me sick to even think about it. He thinks he can use that charming grin of his to get whatever damn thing he wants, and he always has. He's been doing that for ages, Tempe. You know it. I know it. And, he knows we both know it. That's why he's always pulled that little dark and brooding act on you, waxed a little vulnerable, flashed you that charm-smile of his because he knows it's the one thing that will make you look the other way. You've actually always fallen for that not so subtle move of his, and I'll never, ever understand why. I mean, come on, Tempe. You fell for it. You actually fell for it. How can you not understand? You deserve so much more—" _

"_I deserve to be happy, Dad," Brennan interrupted again. "And Booth makes me happy—very happy, in fact. I love him. I've loved him for a long, long time. You know that better than most. And, now, more importantly, he's my husband. Booth and I got married. __Why can't you understand this? I mean, I finally did what you've been harping about for centuries. I finally did it after you thought I never would. I married the person I love more than anything in the world, just like you did when you married Mom.__So, that's it, Dad. You need to just accept reality and deal with it. And..." There was a shuffling of papers and the sound of a desk chair's wheels rolling on the floor. "We're done discussing this. At least, I am. I need to get back to work. Angela's on her way with a sketch of a murder victim and I have better things to do than argue with my hard-headed father about a marriage that has already been concluded and, lest there be any doubt, duly consummated."_

_Angela stood there in the hallway outside Brennan's office clutching the file folder to her chest, her mouth gaping open in shock. She wasn't sure whether to quietly turn around and go back to her office, to squeal with joy that Booth and Brennan finally stopped doing their insane dance of unresolved sexual tension and finally did the horizontal tango, or to march into her best friend's office and choke her with her bare hands for not spilling the beans about her marriage—her marriage!—earlier. She was still standing there moments later when Max Keenan stormed out of the office and nearly collided with her as she stood there in stunned silence._

_Yes, indeedy, _Angela thought with a grin. _Nothing can surprise me about those two anymore...not even if I caught them going at it somewhere in the lab. I'm just glad both of them finally got their heads screwed on the right way and got their acts together before something stupid happened to keep them apart even longer than they have been like some new cold-blooded blonde twit that Booth seems to attract like flies._

"He knows I like it," Brennan explained as Angela refocused on what her friend was saying. "And, since flowers of the _Narcissus jonquilia _variety are my favorite, he continues to send them," Brennan smiled as she became lost in her thoughts of the true symbolism behind why she liked getting those particular flowers from him.

After a minute of silence between them, Angela finally broke the silence by asking, "So where is _Il Studalissimo_, anyway? I thought I saw him earlier. He leave to head back to the Hoover or is he out and about with Cam somewhere knocking heads together in that uber sexy way of his?"

Closing the journal that had fallen into her lap and tossing it on the coffee table, Brennan shook her head as she replied, "No, I don't think so. I'm fairly certain he's just outside."

"Doing what?" Angela asked. "Drumming up attendance numbers for the Jeffersonian by parading his sexy self back and forth in front of the main entrance?"

"No," Brennan said, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "If I know him as well as I think I do, and if I must say so myself, I think I know him very, _very _well, I believe he's sitting in the Sequoia pouting right now."

"About what?" Angela asked with a curious arch of her eyebrow. "His latest issue of _Studly G-Man Monthly _get lost in the mail?"

"No," Brennan explained with her previous chuckle growing into a hearty laugh. "That's not it at all."

Her chin jutting up, Angela's brown eyes sparkled as she tilted her head and asked, "Okay. I'll bite. What's got his starched boxer briefs in a bunch?"

Licking her lips, Brennan answered, "I told him that I would buy him one of the new Dodge Vipers, one of the SRT-10 roadsters that he's been salivating over for about six weeks...ever since he found out what the new models look like."

"Okay, honey," Angela said as her brow furrowed.

She remembered walking into the diner a few weeks earlier and finding the two partners sitting at their usual corner table, discussing the features of the new Viper. As she sat down at the table with them, Booth acknowledged her with a warm smile and a friendly nod before launching back into his recital of the engine specifications of the coupe (510 horsepower and 535 pound-feet of torque) versus the roadster (500 horsepower and 525 pound-feet of torque). At the time, she'd assumed it was another one of the moments of geek that Booth tended to lapse into within the first day or so after the latest issue of _Car and Driver_ hit the newsstand. Angela had uttered a quick laugh as she found herself unable to contain her surprise as she realized that they hadn't been discussing the car generally, but rather had been talking about which he actually wanted. For a guy who loved cars as much as Booth did—Angela would readily admit to having had certain fantasies over the years involving a 1965 Camaro jacked up in a garage and a grease-smeared Booth wearing tight jeans and a white wifebeater T-shirt where he saw just how flexible the artist really was as he bent her over just the right surface—he should've been over the moon at being able to drive a high-powered sports car like that on weekends. She shook her head in puzzlement.

"Color me confused," she said. "You told Booth you'd buy him an expensive toy like that, and he's pissy why?"

"Well, I'm not quite certain why myself," Brennan said. "Except, I suspect it has to do with the fact that I told him that we could buy it. I _wanted_ to buy it for him, actually."

"So...the problem is?" Angela prompted with a gentle wave of her arm.

Brennan shrugged. "I actually wanted to do it for him. I wanted to buy it for him. But—"

"But," Angela prodded the forensic anthropologist with a gently knowing look on her face. "You put what condition on it?"

Scowling for a few seconds, Brennan's mouth twisted before she then sighed and answered, "I told him if we were going to get one, I wanted to get the black one."

"Ohhhh," Angela said, as comprehension dawned. If nothing else, Booth was a red-blooded American male, and she knew that nothing screamed machismo louder than a hot red sports car zooming down the road with a low, throaty growl as its engine revved up in top gear. The very thought of it oozed masculinity, she thought. Just like Booth. "I get it now. He wanted a different color? What, red, or something?"

"Yes," Brennan nodded. "Indeed. He liked the dark cherry red one quite well."

"Okay, Bren. So, what's the big deal?" Angela asked. "I mean, the black is sexy as hell, but the red is pretty hot, too. Is it really that big a deal to you? I mean, if it were me, I'd kill my dad and the rest of his bandmates without blinking twice to get either one."

Pursing her lips, Brennan said, "In fact, Ange, I _do _have my own reasons for preferring the black."

Angela cocked an eyebrow as she asked, "That are important enough to get Booth's fur in a dander? Really?"

Slowly nodding, Brennan answered, "Indeed, the reason is quite important to me. However, as you've alluded to, since it was such a big deal for him, I was willing to compromise."

Another look of confusion furrowed Angela's smooth almond colored brow before she blinked a few times and then asked, "Wait, I don't get it. Now I'm really confused. Are you telling me that Booth is still having some epic hissy fit even though you said that you were going to get the color Viper he wanted? You told him that you'd get the black one, right?"

Nodding slowly, Brennan confirmed, "Correct."

"Then, what's the problem?" Angela asked. "What am I missing? Because I gotta tell you, Bren, it feels like I'm missing something at least the size of the Grand Canyon."

Shrugging her slightly slumped shoulders, Brennan responded, "Well, it's simple really. Booth continued to sulk even when I told him that if he really wanted the red one, for him, I'd grudgingly find it an acceptable substitution—"

"Wait," Angela said, waving her hand vaguely in the air. "You already said that part, Bren. And I didn't get it the first time. If you told him that you were okay with the red one, then why is he still being pissy?"

"Because," Brennan said wryly. She leaned back against the couch cushion and rolled her shoulders back with a wince, then gave a weary sigh before she continued. "He wanted both—the black one and the red one, and he thought he could charm his way into getting both. But, then I had to tell him no at lunch...again...for the umpteenth time in the past two days. We've been over this point before. He doesn't seem to understand that just because we have money and he 'wants something cool' that doesn't mean we should buy it. So, he dropped me off in front of the Jeffersonian and refused to come in. I believe this is his passive aggressive way of sulking about it since he knows I'm right. Between my silver Mercedes, the blue Prius, and the Sequoia, there are only so many additional cars that it's realistic for us to have. I told him we could purchase either the black or the red Viper...but not both."

Angela chuckled as she imagined Booth sitting out there in the garage pouting. In some ways, it was yet another surprise, seeing the Special Agent with the working-class Pennsylvania roots acquiesce to having money spent on him and being able to spend more lavishly than he had when he'd only access to his government salary to live on. Yet then again, she'd long ago noticed that Booth had always been willing to spend a pretty penny when it came to certain luxuries—his well-tailored wool suits, a half-dozen custom-fitted leather jackets, and Ray-Ban sunglasses, of which he owned at least three pair—so perhaps it wasn't a tremendous stretch to see him accede to enjoying the fruits of Brennan's wealth.

Shaking her head in amusement, Angela's eyes danced with laughter as she said, "You just love punishing that boy, don't you?"

"I might enjoy just a tad of sadistic pleasure from inflicting such pain on Booth, yes," Brennan chuckled. She then said, "Besides, from a more practical perspective, if we got both, I wouldn't have any place to park the Deep Impact Blue V6 Mustang convertible I pre-ordered from Ford when it comes off the assembly line."

Angela's eyes narrowed and a smirk curved her lips as she said, "And who's the Mustang for?"

Brennan smacked her lips as she said quite happily, "Me."

She smiled as she thought about the car, and how she was very particular about the things that she wanted. when she wanted it. She didn't just want a sports car—she wanted a very specific sports car in a very specific color, and she had bided her time waiting for the right one to come along with all of the features she wanted. In a way, the car was yet in a long line of handsome indulgences she'd sought after over the years, being willing to wait patiently until the right one came along, but once she had set her eyes on what she wanted, she was relentless in pursuing it, with very little regard for the cost. She thought about her home in London's Cheapside district, which she had long since rented out after leaving England for America, and she thought about the charming, brash man she took into her bed when she still lived in that cozy, timbered home, and how he, too, was another indulgence that she was determined to have as her own. She shrugged a little as she considered how heavy the cost of his love had been, and how she would never have guessed that the night she first laid eyes on his smirking, sweat-slicked face after the boxing match in Covent Garden in 1860.

"Oh, Bren," Angela said, taking a deep breath as she looked at her friend sitting there on the couch, her feet propped up as she shifted her posture again, struggling to find a comfortable position despite the changes that Booth's child had wrought on her body. "Somehow," she added with a toothy smile, "I think Booth will get over it." She paused for a beat before she added, "I'll be back in a bit. Try not to overdo it okay?" She took one last admiring glance at Brennan, then nodded to herself and walked out of the office.

* * *

**-tbc-**

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**A/N2**: So, there we have it. We bet some of you weren't expecting that little bombshell, were you? ::grin:: Brennan's pregnant...Booth is pouting...what's to come next? Want to find out, the next chapter is cued and ready to go, so help encourage us to post it all the more quickly to let us know what you think of the latest turn of events. Thanks for reading!


	2. Pt II: Visitors thru the Revolving Door

**A Would-be Reunion**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

**Logistical Notes: **Although we've said it before, just in case people are wondering, for those who are familiar with Whedon-verse, this story assumes the events through the end of Angel's series finale ("Not Fade Away") and the comic-book "Angel: After the Fall" are canon. It ignores all other stories in the Angel chronology, including the BTVS Season 8 and Twilight storyline in the canon comics. For those others who are wondering, this story would be set roughly sometime during the first part of the second-half of season 4 of _Bones_.

**UNF** **Alert: **Yes, we're horrible teases. Like Part I, yes, the warning is still there even if no true unf alert should be issued...but we still do promise there will be...eventually.

**A/N: **We are so pleased that so many of you are digging the progression of this story's universe. Melding to complex canon worlds like those of _Angel _and _Bones_ is no easy thing, especially in a believable way. It makes us feel warm fuzzies that so many people think we're rocking the hybrid we've created. So, thanks to all who shared their thoughts with us thus far. It means more to us than you can imagine. Now, without further adieu...

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**Part II: Visitors through the Revolving Door**

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A few minutes later, after Angela had left to go check on the results of some code she'd left to compile so she could figure out the source of the odd software feature that was interfering with the efficiency of the newest functionality she'd added to the Angelatron, Brennan once more found herself alone in her office. She sat there for a little while, palming her belly with one hand as she flipped the pages of the anthropology journal—the same one that she'd retrieved from the coffee table where she'd tossed it earlier—with the other. No sooner had she finished reading the last paragraph of the current article that she was trying to read for the fifth time when the quiet of her office was once more shattered by a familiar, nasal voice.

"Temperance?"

Brennan looked up and smiled at the face of her old friend, Stephanie James, who had long ago given up her birth name and taken to calling herself by a more mystical sobriquet.

"Avalon," she said, closing the journal and setting it on the side table. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"I was in the neighborhood and so thought I might drop in to so how you were doing," Avalon said with a soft laugh, glancing around the very contemporary design of Brennan's office, with its steel, glass and dark wood, illuminated by recessed halogen lighting and decorated with artifacts from ancient Mycenae and eighth-century Mali to seventeenth century Spain and everywhere in between. "You know, I've always loved coming to your office, Temperance. For someone who enjoys working with ancient things as much as you do, you seem to have a penchant for these very modern spaces. It's quite nice."

Brennan flashed her eyebrows and shrugged. "Well," she said. "I suppose when you're as used to reinventing yourself as you and I are, it seems only natural to combine the ancient and the modern into a single presentation."

"Maybe," Avalon replied with a flash of her eyebrows and a noncommittal shrug. Taking a seat on the couch opposite where Brennan sat, she crossed her legs, turned to her and smiled. "So how are you feeling?"

"Tired," Brennan responded immediately. "But, not as tired and sick as I was a couple of months ago."

Nodding her head, Avalon said, "The ginger tea helped?"

Smiling, Brennan answered, "Yes. Like a charm. Thanks for suggesting it to me."

A sad smile suddenly crossed Avalon's face as she said, "I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't."

Arching an auburn eyebrow, Brennan asked, "Oh, really? You never did tell me where you found it. Is it an old family recipe or something?"

Shaking her head, Avalon's sad smile grew softer as her green eyes watered slightly. "You might say that," she said. "It was one of the most common recipes your mother used to prescribe. And, I know from firsthand experience how good it is. I never would've gotten through my pregnancy without it, you know."

Brennan pursed her lips and nodded, closing her eyes as she remembered accompanying her mother on one of her rounds to visit pregnant clients. She tried to recall her mother's face. It had been so many years that she only clearly remembered random snippets of her life as a girl growing up in Tudor England. She remembered her mother's long dark hair, plaited into braids that fell nearly to her waist, and her beautiful eyes which sparkled with love and intelligence as she read Psalms from her Book of Hours. She remembered her mother's long, slender fingers teaching a young Brennan how to crimp the round edge of a beef pasty. And she remembered watching her mother tend to a leg of lamb that she was roasting for her daughter's thirteenth birthday celebration. Brennan took a deep breath and nodded, trying to smile through the sudden wave of sadness that had overtaken her.

"Mother was good that way," she said. She was going to say more, about how she still missed her, but she held back, and closed her mouth without another word.

For a few moments, the two women—one a mother, another soon to be—sat in silence, thinking of a third woman, also a mother, who had died more than four centuries earlier. After a little while, Avalon looked up and broke the silence, hoping to dispel some of the slight melancholy that had inadvertently settled over the pair.

Lifting her clear green gaze up to meet Brennan's eyes, Avalon suddenly smiled when she heard Brennan take a sharp breath when her stomach fluttered lightly from what she knew to be another hard kick from the growing baby.

"She still turning cartwheels and somersaults?" Avalon smiled.

Her lips pursed, Brennan slowly nodded. "Yes, she's been unusually active this afternoon."

Tilting her head, Avalon said, "Maybe she just wants to remind you that she's here."

Brennan considered the point and then shrugged. "Possibly," she conceded. "Of course, it would be hard for me to forget her presence giving her close proximity to my vital organs and how she's developed a keen predilection for pummeling them on a regular basis."

Avalon stared at the forensic anthropologist for a long minute and then responded thoughtfully, "You know, I remember when I was pregnant with Russ, he loved kicking me in the kidneys. I always thought he might be a soccer player in the making if he was gonna kick me like that."

Grumbling, Brennan shook her head, "There have been no studies that show any correlation between fetal movement in utero and career choice in later life, Steph."

The use of the name that she'd gone by for many centuries, and which only a few people still used with her, seemed to subtly shift the mood as the pair fell back into an old and familiar rapport of people who'd been family for centuries.

One of the few people, like Angela, who could resist rolling her eyes at Brennan's overt literalness, Avalon merely smiled and said, "Is that so?" She then paused and then said, "You know, Tempe, I know I've said it before, but I have to say it again. You sure surprised the hell out of your dad and I when you told us we were going to be grandparents. I mean, after all this time, I think it's pretty safe to say that you never expected to find yourself being a mother, did you?"

"Heh," Brennan chuckled, rubbing her palm over her slightly rounded belly as the baby kicked her once again. "No, I have to say, I never expected to find myself in this situation." She looked down at the swell of her stomach and then sighed, "I mean, even under normal circumstances, I honestly don't think I would've ever ended up in this situation. But these circumstances are far from ordinary, aren't they?"

"Indeed," Avalon agreed, shrugging with a smile as she considered how very few things having to do with Temperance Brennan had ever been ordinary. She smiled at how she sensed something extraordinary about her the moment she'd held her best friend's auburn-haired babe in her arms during the first hours of her life. Nearly five centuries later, the unique path Brennan's life had taken still managed to surprise the elder witch and her longtime warlock lover, Max Keenan. In a sense, the only thing that didn't surprise Avalon was the fact that Brennan and her extraordinary life never ceased to produce surprise. It was with that irony in mind that she smiled and said, "No surprises there."

"No," Brennan nodded, her eyes narrowing as she considered the point. She glanced down at her lap, or rather, where her lap would have been but for the round swell of her pregnant belly, and palmed the physical manifestation of the dramatic and wholly unexpected turn her life had taken in the last six months. Feeling the baby nudge her hand as if prompting her somehow, she laughed. She took a breath and some of the tension in her shoulders seemed to melt away as she smiled at the woman who was the closest thing to a mother that she'd had for centuries, and then turned serious again as her face relaxed a bit and her voice softened as she spoke.

"You know, Steph," she began. "I don't think I have to tell you...when you spend four hundred fifty-odd years doing what you like, sleeping with who you like, never worrying about contraception of any sort, well...I suppose it's a hard habit to break..." Her mouth broke into a half-grin. "Especially when you...well—"

"When you want someone as bad as you wanted him?" Avalon asked, a sly smile curving her lips as she tried to remember the last time that she and Brennan had a chance to speak with such candor, woman to woman. She bit back a laugh at the thought that the last such opportunity may have involved a half-bottle of Disaronno amaretto and a discussion of their respective lovers' comings and goings over the centuries..

Brennan's lips broke into a crooked grin. "Well, yes," she admitted to the older woman. "For a hundred fifty years—not so long in the big scheme of things for people like us, I know, but still a very long time—he passed in and out of my life. At the beginning, the first couple of decades in London, it was _very _casual." She pursed her lips together as she suppressed a laugh. "Well, who am I kidding? It _was _just sex...very, _very _good sex...but, still, just epic fucking nonetheless."

She waggled her eyebrows at the memory of a particular night Angelus came to her, coming into her home and, quite against type, said not a word as he pressed her against her foyer wall, dropped his suspenders and unfastened his trousers, pulled up her nightgown, and took her, quickly and wordlessly, the only sounds coming from either of them were grunts, moans, growls, sighs and the long groans that peaked in a loud shout as they came, one after the other.

With a snicker, she added, "Really amazing, incredible, mind-blowing sex, but it was still more or less just sex."

Avalon smiled at seeing the dreamy flicker in Brennan's gaze. She remembered the night fifty-some years earlier when she'd sat at a bar in New York's Bowery district as she dealt a tarot spread and had seen a similar look in a different pair of eyes—a warm pair of chocolate brown eyes that shimmered with love as the handsome, brooding vampire with the rugged jaw spoke of his lover who toiled at the site of an ancient city half a world away. She knew then, walking out of that pub that night, that the attractive if somewhat glum, eternally-young man loved Brennan with his whole heart, and hearing him speak that way of her—the woman who had become to Avalon almost like a daughter—filled Avalon with a renewed optimism that the younger witch would someday find the happiness she deserved.

"Sometimes," Brennan continued, "he'd stay a couple of days, maybe a week, then leave again, or I'd run into him, and much the same would happen. Weeks or months or years would pass, and we wouldn't see one another again for quite a long time. But he'd always come back."

"But over time, it became more than just sex, didn't it?" Avalon prompted, a faint smile curving the edges of her mouth. "Even before, well..."

Brennan looked down at her belly and blinked, then brought her eyes up again. "Yes," she admitted. "It was. I mean...well, _he_ wouldn't agree with this part, but I think even before he left for Romania and before he got his soul back that, yes, it was something...something _more_. I don't know what it was, but...well, somewhere along the line it became more than just sex. I don't know what or how much more than it just being sex it was, but there was something more."

Avalon listened and thought of a night, many years before, when Brennan came over to have dinner at the elder witch's home in Shoreditch, and how she'd noticed the change in her, even then. There was a distinctive spring in her step and she seemed to laugh more readily at even the worst of puns or quips, and it was clear that something—or someone—had come into her life and brightened her outlook. Avalon knew that Brennan had kept many lovers over the years, so it couldn't just be that she was keeping the company of a man. There was a certain lightness to her being that was more profound than just the smile in the wake of an attentive lover, but in those days, Brennan was still reticent about discussing the details of her personal life even with the woman who she was closer to than any other in the world. It wasn't until years later that Avalon began to put all of the pieces together. As she sat on the couch in Brennan's office, it was clear that the shift in Brennan's perspective and the softening of her hard-edged view had been a slow but cumulative process.

"I think it's safe to say, you'd already begun to transform one another," Avalon observed. "Each in your own way, perhaps, but there was some type of symbiotic change you wrought on each other. In your hearts, somehow, maybe?"

"Transform each other?" Brennan snorted. "I don't think that's very fair or accurate, Steph. I'm not really that much of a different person than I was back then. And as far as a symbiotic relationship is concerned, in ecological biology, a symbiotic relationship is one where there is mutual dependence and—"

"Hear me out, Tempe," Avalon said, cutting off Brennan's exposition on the scientific meaning of symbiosis. "I mean, even though he was still a soulless vampire, and you were—well, the way you always were, I guess: guarded, aloof, angry..."

"I wasn't angry," Brennan said defensively. "I _wasn't_," she insisted defiantly.

Avalon's slender eyebrows shot up in a look of pure incredulity as she remembered how, in Brennan's thirteenth and fourteenth years, days or weeks would pass without her speaking a word to her father—or occasionally, for that matter, to Avalon herself—except in the context of the loud shouting matches the two would have in the sitting room of their timbered house in Marylebone. _"You can't tell me what to do," the willful, sharp-tongued teenager yelled at her father. Her blue eyes flashed with a long-smoldering rage as she continued to rant. "I'm a grown woman, and I'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions! Stop trying to run my life and control me. You, with your secret bargains—you make me sick. I'm not a pawn in some game of mystical chess. You don't get to make choices for me anymore. You've done quite enough of that to last several lifetimes, don't you think?" _These contests of will between the two most fiercely stubborn people the flaxen-haired witch had ever known normally ended in a bloody draw, with both combatants brooding silently for a day or two, refusing to give the other direct eye contact, even at the supper table. On the eve of her fifteenth birthday, the young Brennan abruptly moved out of her father's home, a few days after one such shouting match, and took a room in the home of a master midwife under whom she'd been training. After that, they saw her only once or twice a month, but the roiling anger seemed to have been reduced to a low, albeit ever-present simmer.

"Mmm-hmm," Avalon murmured, cocking her head to the side and arching a skeptical eyebrow that caused the younger witch to deflate a bit.

"Okay, " Brennan conceded. "Maybe I was...just a little bit."

Avalon tilted her head to the side and gave Brennan a critical look, clearly surprised at hearing Brennan's admission, but it quickly softened into a smile before she spoke again. "Maybe a little bit, hmmm?" Avalon said with a knowing smile as she repeated Brennan's words to keep herself from teasing the younger woman about the gross understatement of that which she was willing to concede on the matter. "But you'd already begun to soften around the edges, both of you, I think. At least, that's the impression I got when I saw you in—what, '94, or '95?" She shook her head with a quiet laugh. "I can't quite remember the precise year exactly."

Avalon gave a little shrug and shot Brennan an awkward grin almost as if looking for forgiveness. It seemed to her that over the centuries, the memories layered on top of one another like a thick sediment, and sometimes she struggled to tease them apart and remember which events happened in which year. She knew Brennan was gifted with an exceptional memory, but she herself had no such gift.

She gave another small shrug, pouted her lips and said, "I'm sorry. I know that's terrible, but you know I've never been that good with details like that—" She stopped, shook her head and let out a puff of air as she tried to cull the memory from five centuries' worth of recollections. "I guess...well, it must have been the summer of 1894. Yes, I think that's it, because I remember crossing the brand-new Tower Bridge earlier that same day, wasn't it? I think that's right because we were all going to those parties. You remember? It was quite a sensation when it opened."

"I remember," the scientist said with a slight nod as a nostalgic look crossed her face. "I was quite good friends with Sir Horace Jones who was the chief designer and city architect at the time."

Avalon smiled at the reminder of how well-connected Brennan had always managed to be, despite the fact that she was neither gregarious nor in any way a conformist to societal expectations for how a proper woman should be. "Mmm, yes," she said with a smile. "Why am I not surprised, Tempe? You always seemed to have a knack for meeting the movers and shakers of the day—in particular, interesting men who are good with their hands." The witch-turned-psychic waggled her eyebrows suggestively in an attempt to pry a smile out of Brennan, whose face had taken on a more serious look. With a shrug, Avalon continued. "There were so many parties that year," she said. "I was going to those parties by myself, at that point, because your father and I were still on the outs, even though he'd long since stopped carrying on with that awful vampire woman, Helen, who he'd taken to fussing around with after we drifted apart in the late 1870s."

The brief thought of Helen and her affair with Avalon's longtime lover made the old witch grimace with disgust.

"God, I don't think I've ever told you this, but I saw them carrying on at a party once...oh, it must have been 1879, I guess...and it turned my stomach, really," Avalon said. She watched with a slightly pleased look on her face as a look of obvious surprise crossed the forensic anthropologist's face, but quickly softened to nothing more than an arch of an eyebrow before Brennan spoke.

"Really?" Brennan coughed slightly to hide the last remnants of her surprise. "After all this time, I had no idea, Steph."

Her self-satisfied smile widening, Avalon shrugged her shoulders lightly. "Well, you know me, Tempe. I have to keep you on your toes somehow after all these years. Otherwise, I think you might lose respect for me."

Chuckling, the younger witch shook her head. "That would never, _ever _happen, Steph," she replied. She then paused for a beat, and then asked with her eyes widening a bit in clear curiosity. "So, if you don't mind me asking...if you did know what was going on with Dad and Helen...how did you, uhh...well—"

Brennan's voice trailed off before Avalon took pity on her near stepdaughter and finished the sentence for her. "How did I deal with it without killing either your dad or that two-bit vampire trollop?" Avalon asked.

Laughing, Brennan nodded. "Yes," she said. "Exactly."

Avalon was quiet for a minute before she finally offered up an answer of sorts. "Well, I won't lie and say it was easy," she began. "Especially that one time when I actually them in person. I mean, I'd heard about the two of them taking up together long before I actually saw them. But, actually seeing it was something I hadn't quite prepared myself for despite my best efforts to the contrary. And, well, it was everything I could do not to flick my wrist and set some kind of nasty, itchy pox on that woman with a bit of magick. I sure wasn't sad to see her go—only that I didn't get to give her a piece of my mind before you took things into your own hands and...handled that situation...so creatively, hmm?"

She closed her eyes and took a breath as she tried to banish the unpleasant thought of Helen, then shook her head as she tried to recenter her thoughts.

"But yes," she said with a nod. "I think that's right, since there were all sorts of festivities held in late June that year to celebrate the opening of the Tower Bridge, it must've been 1894. I think that was before you took your first trip to Egypt, wasn't it?" Avalon shrugged, paused for a few seconds, then continued before Brennan had a chance to respond. "Anyway," she said, "Those details aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. What is...and what my point is, I think the two of you had begun to change each other before the two of you actually changed—he because of the Gypsy magic he ran into in Romania and you, well, because found something to invest yourself in that was outside of yourself, and you started to give something back to the universe. What started out as a mere diversion or distraction, if you will, did you a lot of good, Tempe. Probably more so than any of us realized at the time."

"Yes," Brennan agreed. "In the long run, I concur with that assessment." She stopped, looked off at what appeared to be a random spot on the distant wall, and took several long breaths before her voice lowered, and she continued speaking. "You know, just between you and me, Steph, I don't know how I'd have made it through all the comings and goings over the years, the ups and the downs, had it not been for my work in archaeology and anthropology. We were never in the same place at the same time for very long, but when we were, it was so very good. And, each time when we parted, it got harder and harder and harder to deal with cutting myself off from him and being separated no matter how many times we kept vowing to find a way to make things work with one another. It was so very hard that I-I—" Her voice stopped for a beat before Brennan swallowed heavily and continued. "It was hard letting him go each time. As sweet and pleasurable as it was coming back to him each time, the leaving almost killed me from a metaphorical standpoint. Especially after our time together in Chicago."

Narrowing her eyes, Avalon puzzled at the reference, then nodded as she realized that the single word, 'Chicago,' referred to more than just the city where her old friend had sojourned for the better part of ninety years.

"You were happy then," Avalon said quietly, raising her eyes to meet Brennan's. "When you found him, and those years you had together. I remember your letters, and how..." The elder witch's voice trailed off as she searched for the right words and watched the emotional flicker in the younger woman's eyes as she waited for her to continue. "The tone of your letters shifted so much, I suspected something different had occurred. But, once I saw you on that one visit when we had lunch at that little bistro in the Loop you loved so much? I knew then that something had changed." She hesitated for a moment, then added, "You _had _changed, Temperance."

Thinking of the five years that Angel lived with her in Chicago, she remembered the warm contentment she'd felt at knowing each night as she opened the door to her Gold Coast apartment that he would be there, waiting for her with a freshly-poured glass of whiskey or an uncorked bottle of red wine, his faint smile breaking open into a toothy grin as soon as his warm brown eyes met hers. "You know, that's when I realized it," she said vaguely.

"Hmmm?" Avalon asked, tilting her head to the side as she watched Brennan's eyes turn a bit hazy and stare off into the distance. "What's that?"

She was quiet for a minute, and then, when she finally spoke, it was in a soft voice that Avalon had to strain to hear. "That's...that's when I realized that I loved him," Brennan replied. "That's when I knew I loved him...really, was in love with him. For the first time, that's when I knew..." She blinked a couple of times, refocusing her cool blue gaze gaze as she placed her hand on the swell of her belly while the baby shifted around, nudging the palm of her hand, the sensation being more gentle than what she'd felt earlier. Looking down, she rubbed her belly and smiled. "Yes, anyway, that's when I knew."

Brennan sat there in silence, lost in her thoughts for a minute, then blinked away the memory.

"Anyway, to go back to your previous question," she said with a slight shrug. "No, I never expected to be a first-time mother at my age. I mean, when your longtime lover is a vampire, who was supposed to be utterly and completely sterile, you get into certain habits. And, I'll admit it, I didn't give birth control a second thought. I mean, why would I? Even after Angel proved himself the only fecund vampire in the recorded history of his kind, I still never thought..." Her voice trailed off. "I've never needed birth control with _human _lovers, Steph. It was never...well, basically, if I'd managed to avoid getting pregnant after being sexually active for 450-odd years, you can't blame me for assuming that the trend would continue for the foreseeable future?"

Avalon smiled faintly at Brennan's slightly flustered question as she slowly shook her head. "No, I can't," she answered.

Looking back over at her, Brennan smiled. "Thanks," she told her. "I don't think until you just said it that I realized how much I needed to hear that because a part of me has felt _so _fucking stupid ever since I found out that I was pregnant."

Arching an eyebrow at her, Avalon asked, "Why? Aren't you happy?" She paused for a beat before she shook her head slowly and then added, "I don't think I remember seeing you this happy in..." The old witch-turned-mystic leaned back on the couch and smiled. "I don't think I've ever seen you _this _happy, well...ever. I mean, yeah, you sent me a couple of letters in the mid-20s that seemed rather chipper..." She leaned over and poked Brennan in the arm with a playful grin. "And you sent me that one letter from Mexico in...what was it? '28 or '29? Sometime before the Crash. And then, when you were in Iraq in the 50s. I know you were pretty upbeat back then. But your aura has never been this peaceful or content or just in general this...well, like I said, happy."

Tilting her head, Brennan considered Avalon's points. She then said, "You're right. I was very content all those times. Especially during the dig in Iraq." Brennan smiled at the memory. "The Shanidar Cave excavations in Kurdistan," she said. "Professionally speaking, that was a very thrilling time, on par with the high level of anticipation and excitement I felt in Egypt when Howard Carter's team discovered the intact tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. Perhaps even more so since I was actually in Iraq in 1957 and was actually apart of the expedition that was working under Professor Solecki." Her smile grew as she recalled the details of the time she had spent on that expedition. "Did you know that the Shanidar Cave yielded a total of nine Neanderthal skeletons dating back at least 70,000 years—although, interestingly, a tenth set of Neanderthal remains were found there years later but a subsequent expedition that the original crew neglected to find for some inexplicable reason that I still can't explain to this day—and the presence of floral material and pollen residues near the bodies suggested a ritual burial? It was a very exciting time to be a physical anthropologist working in the field. I—" Suddenly realizing that she was rambling a bit, as she tended to do when she talked about her work in any context, she sheepishly looked to Avalon. "Sorry, Steph. You know I get carried away sometimes since I can't talk to everyone about the true extent of my past field experiences. I didn't mean to start rambling."

Waving her off lightly, Avalon chuckled. "It's okay, Tempe. After all this time, I'm sorta used to it." She paused for a minute, the pair laughed, and she patted Brennan on the forearm as she looked at the way her old friend rested her hand over her womb. "So, I'm right, right? You're truly happy now?"

Brennan's blue eyes held Avalon's light green ones. Her brow crinkled for a beat before Brennan swallowed heavily. "Yes, of course, I'm happy," Brennan finally answered. "It's just...I'd be being less than honest if I didn't admit that I've experienced a tremendous amount of rapid change in my life over the last few months. In some ways, it's been quite wonderful. More than I've ever thought I deserved or happier than I ever could be. But, on the other hand, at the same time, it's been a lot to deal with. I-I...in some ways, it's been very hard for me to deal with the changes."

Avalon recalled the first weeks of Brennan's pregnancy and how the younger woman had seemed a tad off kilter now that the older witch looked back in hindsight. "Tempe," she began, her voice taking on a mothering tone that Brennan knew all too well. "Do you mind me asking...well, how did you feel when you found out you were pregnant?"

Brennan cocked her head to the side, then turned and smiled faintly. "At first?" she asked for clarification. Avalon nodded. Pursing her lips, Brennan thought for a moment before she answered. "I guess...well, it was a mixture of emotions. It's hard to describe because I was so shocked."

Chuckling again, Avalon replied, "Well, shocked is a feeling, Tempe. So, why not start with that, huh?"

Nodding, Brennan said, "Okay." She stopped for another minute, took a breath, and then began to speak once more. "Well, then, yes. I believe shock is the most apt adjective to describe the initial emotional response I had to the news that I was gestating a fetus after 450 years of life." Her mouth twisted for a minute before she shook her head and then added, "Yes, I would say that I was shocked, surprised, and generally confused. Puzzled, really. And...frustrated. Definitely frustrated."

"Frustrated?" Avalon asked with a tilt of her head. "In what way?"

Brennan exhaled a long breath before she responded. "Well, I guess...once the reality of the situation set in, I realized that for the first time in my life, something had happened that I had no control over. I mean, of course I did, since it was my choice to engage in coitus with Booth that resulted in the fetus' conception. But, I didn't make a conscious choice to reproduce, and that made me very frustrated. I felt like a major choice about my life and my life with Booth had been taken away from me. And, you know—you know, Steph, how much I fucking hate it when I feel like I have no choice or control in a matter. I was so..."

Her voice trailed off as she flushed a bit, and she bit back the word that was on the tip of her tongue. She tried to swallow it, but Avalon saw her reaction and pounced on it.

"Don't do that, Tempe," Avalon said. "I know you well enough after all this time to know what you were going to say anyway, so you might as well just spit it out."

Brennan let out a sharp sigh and closed her eyes, then shook her head and, staring at a snag on the edge of the sofa cushion for a moment before bringing her eyes once more to meet Avalon's, finally shrugged and sighed again. "Alright," Brennan finally conceded, a tad of the annoyance she felt at being called on her initial emotional response as only Avalon could do so creeping into her voice. "Fine. I was more than a little angry."

"Angry, hmmm?" Avalon said with an arched eyebrow. "Imagine that. You angry."

Brennan again tried to resist rolling her eyes. She couldn't help herself, however, as Avalon shot her a teasing smirk.

"What do you want me to say, Steph?" she finally asked. "I mean, yeah, I went from shocked to angry in about 0.5 seconds." She then glanced over at the door as if expecting her partner to walk through it at any moment before she added, "And that was just in the first ten seconds after I saw the results of the drug-store pregnancy test. I saw red. I was so...well, I can't think of any other way to describe it. I literally saw red. When I saw the positive result show up on the third test, well, let's just say it was a very good thing I was home alone when I did it, because I think I would've ripped Booth's balls off at that moment if he was there with me. I was pissed, for lack of a better term. Livid, really."

"You were angry at Booth?" Avalon asked. "Why? For getting you pregnant?"

Brennan let out a deep sigh before she slowly nodded. "I know," she said with a shrug and a dismissive wave of her hand. "It's completely irrational, in the context of everything, and I know I should've been better than that, but I can't help it. It's—"

"It's how you felt," Avalon said, completing the sentence once more for the younger woman. Taking a slow, measured breath, as if by so doing she could confer some of her steady calm on Brennan, she nodded slowly and said in an even, almost airy voice, "Feelings aren't good or bad, Temperance. They just _are._"

Furrowing her brow, Brennan rubbed her belly again and said, "You know, Booth says that. Quite often, in fact."

"He's a very wise man, your partner," the mystic said with a smile. The term 'partner' rolled off her tongue as _pot-nuh, _and Brennan couldn't help but smile to remember how her old friend's accent had sounded a half-century earlier when she first arrived in the U.S. after her five-hundred year old home in Shoreditch was flattened during the Blitz. "How is he, by the way? Ever since you had the fight with your dad, we haven't seen much of you two together. I know he had a bit of a tough time last Halloween..."

Brennan took a breath and sighed. "He's doing fine now. He's so excited, he can hardly contain his jubilation at the thought of being a father again. But, you're right—"

Recalling the horrible time when the memories of his past lives as Liam, Angelus, and Angel bombarded him in the span of a few minutes on Halloween night, largely because of her, Brennan felt a familiar guilt creep back into her mind. However, recalling her agreement with Booth that what was in the past was best left in the past and that they only would look to the here and now and future, she quickly pushed the painful feelings of guilt away and focused on Avalon's statement.

"That he had a bit of a tough time would probably be a gross understatement to make," she said in a low voice. She was silent for a few moments, rolling her lips between her teeth as she thought about how rapidly Booth had spiraled into a disabling panic before she used every bit of her strength to get him out of the lab without allowing her own lingering current feelings of guilt to reemerge.

"It all came back," she said, her voice so gray and evenly-pitched that Avalon quirked an eyebrow. "You know, Steph. That night? It was horrible for him. It all came back and washed over him like a tidal wave, literally happening in the blink of an eye. All of it, all of the memories of everything he'd ever done and been through, all the way back to him being a boy growing up in Galway during the reign of the second King George. Everything he'd done as a prodigal young man, and then, after he was turned, as Angelus..."

Brennan's voice trailed off as she thought about the first time she heard her old friend Darla talk about her young Irish consort, and then remembered the night, years later, when she first laid eyes on him, hustling his way to the top prize in a bare-fisted boxing match that cost Brennan fifty pounds after she'd placed her wager on Monroe, the taller, stronger-looking brawler from Bristol who Angelus had laid on the floor in a matter of a couple of minutes, taking the time to give the crowd, who had overwhelmingly bet against him, a bit of a show before decking his monosyllabic growler of an opponent. She gave a small if fleeting smile as she thought about how she'd made him make her whole, in a manner of thinking, by taking her that night on her Oriental carpet in front of the roaring fire in the hearth.

Brennan narrowed her eyes and considered how that one decision—seemingly insignificant in the big scheme of things—set off a long, unexpected chain of events that led to his leaving England and regaining his soul after being cursed by Gypsies, his redemption after decades of lonely wandering and anguish, their reunion and the binding of their souls, his regaining his humanity, their parting and yet another reunion, eighty-odd years after their first reunion, and, ultimately, to the conception of the child who was growing inside of her. With a heavy, solemn sigh, she thought of the searing anguish she saw in his eyes the freezing Halloween night she found him in a Chicago alley, and how long it taken him to come to some sort of peace with what he'd done in the century and a half he lived without a soul. She had an inkling of all the gory mayhem he had wrought in those years, and she shivered at the thought of how those memories must have seemed to him the night he regained them all in the wake of a single kiss.

"You know, Steph," she began after she drew a tentative breath. "All the things he did before he got cursed by the Gypsies in Romania," she said, the smile having fled her face as a frown took its place. "It haunts him," she explained, her voice turning quieter and darker at the edges. "Even still, sometimes. The lives he took as Angelus. The sheer scale of it, you know.? I mean, over nearly a hundred fifty years, he probably took..." She glanced over at the corner of the ceiling as she did the mental math. "Well, if he took one human life a day, for a century and a half, that's almost 55,000, and he had much more lethal nights than those, so..." Avalon pursed her lips but didn't say anything. "Plus the human lives Booth took when he was in the Army, as a sniper, and since then—fifty in all—which by comparison is nothing, but those deaths left deeper scars, I think, because he had a conscience, a soul, when he took those...and, well, I guess it's just—"

"Booth carries a heavy burden," Avalon said, cutting Brennan off mid-sentence. "In his head...and in his heart," she added, tapping her forefingers on her chest. As she thought of the handsome, strapping agent with the warm, expressive brown eyes, she wondered if Booth's joy at the news of Brennan's pregnancy reflected, at some level, not just another chance at fatherhood so that he could 'do things right,' but if he also saw it as another chance for redemption, an opportunity to create human life instead of taking it. However, at seeing the emotion in Brennan's eyes, she held her tongue and kept that observation to herself. "He's a man who feels things deeply...your partner," she said gently.

Brennan nodded soberly, then blinked a couple of times before she shrugged and spoke. "I-I...well," she began, suddenly struggling for words. "When I made the bargain that resulted in Angel becoming Booth," she said, "I did it—well, like I told you when I came to see you that day before I did it—I did it to save him, to save his life. But, well, a part of me was happy for him that, on top of being safe from harm, he would finally be free of that burden—the guilt—that he carried for all those years. And now..." She sighed and remembered an argument, a few years earlier, that she'd had with him in the bathroom of his penthouse apartment in Los Angeles.

_Angel placed his hands on his hips, tilted his head and looked at her sympathetically as the shower stream continued to pelt his skin. "I'm not asking you to forget it happened, Bren," he said. "Just that you consider setting it aside. Set it aside, and don't let it eat away at us any more. Don't let it steal any more of this time we have together, you know? That's what I mean by letting it go." _

She shook her head and blinked away the memory.

"Well, what's done is done," she said. "There's no sense treading over all that ground again."

Avalon cocked her head to one side and arched a neatly-waxed eyebrow as she studied Brennan's face. She hesitated for a minute, something Avalon rarely did in her life since she trusted her first instinct that much. However, feeling a pressing need, she took a breath and then asked in a quiet voice, "Tempe, it was worth it in the end, don't you think?" She watched Brennan take a few seconds to make sense of the question and then her eyes widened a bit in obvious surprise. The look caused Avalon to hesitate again and then she tried to soften her question as she clarified, "I mean, all of the heartache you went through after he came back into your life? I know at the time, it was very tough for you. I remember...well, you seemed...I don't know...unsure about things after you saw him again. Unsettled in a way that I hadn't ever seen you before. If I didn't know that you couldn't be 'rattled,' I'd almost say that's how you were. I mean, look at what happened the first time you worked together. You two had a blow-up, during that first case you worked together and then it was, what, a year before you were willing to be in the same room with him?" She stopped and paused, looking at Brennan thoughtfully before she continued. "You two have been through so much, especially you, because all that time, you remembered. No one else did, but you..." Avalon reached up and ran her fingers over her brow, then shrugged her shoulders with a sigh. "You were more melancholy in that year, Tempe, than I ever remember seeing you, even right after it all—after Angel was taken from you...after you lost him. Or even after you lost...after we lost your mother..."

"I was angry," Brennan admitted. "I was very angry. Possibly more angry with him than I've ever been before in my life, and that should tell you something."

"You were angry at Booth?" Avalon asked with a puzzled tone of voice. "Really? But why?"

"Well, yes," Brennan said with a curt nod. "I was. Because you have to understand, during that first case...we came so close, Steph. We kissed. I'm still not certain who moved in first, but the kiss we shared on the grimy stoop of that old pool hall, was one of the best kisses we've ever shared. And, that's saying something else again, because the two of us have racked up a lot of kisses over the years. But, it was made even better because...because I thought that maybe we'd be okay. I thought, maybe we could find away to begin again as Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth in a way that would allow us to be happy without contravening the terms of the charm that gave Angel his life as Booth. We were _so _damn close. But—well, after we kissed, that night, he had to be the one to make the next move, to be really sure that this was what he wanted, because I didn't want to unravel everything. I couldn't take that chance. So I turned away from him, got into that cab, and hoped that he would follow."

Avalon was quiet for a minute and then arched an eyebrow at her as she said, "And, did he?"

Brennan nodded slowly. "Yes, of course he did," she answered. "He ran after me with that half-cocky, half-boyishly excited and sweet charming smile on his face. And, I was so sure that he was going to hop in that cab with me. But, instead of getting in the cab with me, you know what? You know what he did? All he could say was 'So, you're afraid when I look at you in the morning, I'll have regrets?'"

Wincing at Brennan's revelation, Avalon was quiet as Brennan looked away from her, lost in the memory as she shook her head slightly.

"I told him that would never happen," she said quietly. "I hoped that maybe one more taunt, one more tempting challenge would get his stubborn ass in the cab. But, it didn't. And, I was so fucking angry when he let me ride off without him." Without realizing it, Brennan's hands had formed into clenched fists as they rested lightly on her stomach. When she became aware of the unconscious gesture, she quickly flattened her hands, and then looked back over at Avalon. "You have no idea how angry I was, Steph. I was so angry and hurt and felt so foolish and rejected. I mean, we were so close to having everything we both had ever wanted, but he let it slip through his fingers because he wouldn't take a chance and get in the damn cab."

Avalon glanced over at Brennan, watching thoughtfully at the sight of the forensic anthropologist's hand palming the curve of her pregnant belly, a bright gleam from the overhead track lighting reflecting off her silver and sapphire wedding ring. "You were angry at him," she said, prompting Brennan. "But, I think I know you well enough to know that you weren't just angry because he didn't get in the cab with you, Tempe. There's something more, isn't there?"

Brennan's mouth opened, but for several moments, she didn't speak. She pressed her lips together in a firm line and closed her eyes, exhaling a long, slow breath, then opened her eyes again before she finally responded "I was afraid," she admitted in a low, faintly cracked voice. "I was...I-I...a part of me was angry at Booth for not getting in the cab because that would mean I didn't need to be worried about doing something so damn stupid that I could destroy his life. So, yes, I was also scared and...I was angry at myself for not wavering on the edge of not having enough self-control to hold him at arm's length. I was afraid that my lack of self-control, my own impatience would ruin everything for him, and make him suffer more in the end than he would if I'd done nothing, and that it all would've been for naught. It scared me so much...I mean, I came so damn close to jumping him right in the alley by the pool hall, Steph."

Avalon's eyes widened as a faint smile cracked her serious face. With a curt laugh, she narrowed her eyes again and looked at Brennan, recognizing in the crooked grin that was spreading across the latter's face that this man, this particular man—who'd, in a way been three different men, all of whom changed Brennan's life in a way no one else ever had—was perhaps the only one that could draw that kind of passion out of a woman who prided herself on her self-control.

Seeing her old friend's curious stare, Brennan remembered more than one occasion where she let Angelus—or, later, Angel—take her in an alley or a dark corner of a tavern and added with a snicker, "It's not like we hadn't done worse than that in public at various points in the past."

Pausing for a second, Brennan finally conceded defeat as Avalon's green eyes continued to stare at her. Shrugging her shoulders, she then continued, "After that, it was just too much. I didn't think about it at the time, but later I came to realize just how close to slipping I had, and so I had to push him away. After that night, I was afraid...afraid that I'd come very close to ruining everything because I couldn't control myself." Brennan closed her eyes and tried to ignore the dark feeling swirling in her gut. "You know, though?" she said grimly. "I guess it didn't matter after all. In the end, even though I took the time I thought I needed and gave myself a lot of space...to ready myself for what I would need to do to be able to see him every day...to be near him without fucking things up so epically for both of us...but in the end, it didn't matter, because my lack of self-control still...I still ruined it for us. I ruined everything, didn't I?" She sniffled abruptly, and then quickly waved off Avalon's concerned look. "It's okay. I'm fine," Brennan said. "It's just the damn hormones."

"No, it's not," Avalon said gently. "Come on, Tempe, I know you better than that."

Brennan blinked at her for a few seconds and then asked, "What?"

"Don't be afraid of the question," Avalon said thoughtfully.

Narrowing her blue eyes, Brennan asked, "Afraid of what question?"

"The question," Avalon said softly. "That...well, wasn't it all worth it in the end? You two finally have the one thing you never were able to have before: one life that you share, together, as husband and wife. And—" She looked down at Brennan's swollen belly and gave a nod of her chin. "Well, now, you two have this child...this miraculous gift of a child that you're going to have, was conceived and will be born in love. You are going to welcome this child into a loving and safe family life...what both you and Booth were always denied yourselves, but what you are going to do so well at providing for your child. So don't you think it was worth it?"

She was thoughtful for a moment before she slowly nodded. "Yes, I do," Brennan agreed. As she saw the smile light up her friend's face, she raised a cautionary hand. "But, Steph, remember...our family? Well, it can only stay a loving and safe one only so long as no one from...well, from that life he had before, whether as Angel or as Angelus, comes around here looking for him. Because, I-I...well, don't think that I haven't thought about the new set of risks that we have to face. Yes, it's true. Booth and I, in many, many ways, are much better off than we were before...but, when he got his memories back, we traded off one set of risks for another." Brennan paused and then shook her head as she admitted, "You know...the idea that someone from that life might come here and find him, that we could lose it all again...that I could lose him again...I-I just can't deal with that. I really don't think I can survive losing him again, Steph."

Avalon took a hesitant breath and pursed her lips as she watched Brennan fidget, something the normally-controlled scientist did not often do, and she could feel the anxiety hang about her like a pall.

"Tempe," she said quietly. "It's going to be alright. Really. You, and Booth, and the baby—everything's going to be fine. You just need to have a little faith."

Brennan looked up, her brow furrowed with skepticism. For a moment, she sat there, not saying a word, her eyes blinking, narrowing, then widening again as her formidable mind gnawed on the problem. After a minute, she drew a long breath and, after another few moments of silence, shook her head in response to a question asked only in her own mind.

"I really tried, you know," she said with a sigh,thinking about the first two years of their partnership. "Even after that night, behind the pool hall, I tried again. Because, after that first night with him, I didn't want there to be any more confusion. So, I thought I'd given him a pretty clear signal, one night last year," she said with a familiarly frustrated weariness creeping into her voice once more, "I tried to tell him that if he just made a play for me, right after things blew up with his ex, Rebecca, that she wasn't his only option for satisfying his biological urges. I mean, I thought I was pretty fucking clear, Steph. But, I was wrong—because you know what he did? For a split second, I thought he was finally going to make a move on me of his own free will, of his own volition and that we'd _finally _be back on track. But, no—"

She bit her lip, her face reddening a bit as she recalled the frustrating memories.

"You know, it turns out I was wrong because he turned around and for the second time, he refused to come and even hit on me, even though I'd all but told him that I wanted him. And, to add injury to insult, he started sleeping with my boss." Brennan paused for a minute before her brow furrowed into a hard scowl as she said more to herself than to Avalon, "A part of me wanted to kill him, you know? I was so fucking pissed off when I found out about him and Cam. I mean, we're talking the type of pissed off that I haven't felt since I did our dear Helen in..."

Her voice trailed off for a minute before she looked back at Avalon and sighed. "But, I didn't, in the end," she said.. "I didn't do a damn thing to him or Cam even though I wanted to curse both of them into the next millenium. I mean, with how I felt that day, going off a balcony and getting staked in the heart really would've been too good for Booth and Cam."

Brennan's voice trailed off once more and then Avalon waited for one minute more before she pressed, "But, in the end, you didn't do anything, did you?"

Shaking her head slowly in response, Brennan answered, "No, I didn't."

"If you were so angry," Avalon said carefully. "What kept you from acting?"

Licking her suddenly dry pink lips, Brennan exhaled slowly before answering. "Well," she began. "It was simple, really. After getting metaphorically sucker punched with the knowledge that Booth was banging my boss when he could've had me, another part of me wanted to throw in the towel and give up." She paused for another beat before she looked up at Avalon and nodded. "That should tell you something, Steph. When do I ever give up about anything once I've set my mind to it?"

Avalon was quiet for a minute and then slowly shook her head. "You don't," she said in a soft voice.

"Yes, well," Brennan said. "I came pretty damn close that day. I was so fucking frustrated. I mean, I'd all but stripped my clothes off in front of him and..."

Avalon's brow furrowed as she frowned slightly, bracing herself for a rather scintillating barrage of lewd details about her almost step-daughter's sex life,but Brennan cut herself off before she waxed too crude even for her old friend.

"I didn't get it," Brennan continued. "I couldn't understand why he was so oblivious to the fact that I wanted him, but I couldn't make the first move. It had to be him. So, I waited, and watched another woman have him when it should be been me. I-I just..." Her voice trailed off again. "And in the end, I still failed him. Just like I was always scared I would be, I was weak, and I ruined his life because I wasn't strong enough to do what I needed to do for him." She shook her head and sighed again. "I don't know. Booth says I need to let things go. Let the past lie, as he says. But, it's hard for me, Steph. It's very hard."

Avalon tilted her head and looked at her old friend with a soft fondness in her eyes. "You're still afraid," she said, her gaze dropping to Brennan's belly before bringing her light green eyes back up to meet Brennan's pale blue ones.

Brennan nodded mutely, glanced down at her abdomen then looked away. "Yes," she said quietly. "I know...maybe it sounds foolishly irrational, but I just feel..." She stopped abruptly and looked down at her abdomen, giving it a closed-mouthed smile as the baby moved again. "Maybe it's foolish, but it's almost like I'm afraid it's too good to be true—the way things have turned out these last few months have been some of the happiest in my life—and, well...there's just a part of me that's almost waiting for the other shoe to drop. We've...we've never been able to be this happy for this long without something happening. Something always happens to ruin it. Something _always _does. And, so, I'm just afraid that something's going to happen to one of us, or to—"

"Tempe," Avalon said, gently interrupting her and forcing a faint smile as her eyes traced the lines of worry on Brennan's face.

"Steph, with all that's happened...to me, and to Booth...and the way I am, I just can't help but wonder if this child would be better off with normal parents who grew up in normal households with normal parents themselves, rather than with..." Brennan's voice trailed off as she gave a sad shrug.

"You know that you and this child are safe. That..." She hesitated and took a breath, nodding slightly before continuing. "What happened to your mother won't happen to you, don't you? That bargain she and your father made—it's played out. Extinguished. The terms were met the night your mother left us."

Brennan's blue eyes widened in surprise and for a moment, she looked away. She swallowed, then squeezed her eyes shut, as if trying to shut away the sight of something she didn't want to see. "I know," she said, clearing her throat. "I-I...I guess it's just that...I don't know...I guess, now that I'm going to be a mother, I miss my own mother even more than I did before. I...just miss her so much right now."

"I know you do," Avalon said, reaching her out and placing her hand over Brennan's. "I miss her, too, Tempe." She blinked away the dampness in her own eyes as she squeezed Brennan's hand. "She was my best friend. Christine was...I always considered her a kindred spirit. Women like you and me, and like your mother—there aren't many like us. There never have been, so we have to stick together." She smiled and patted Brennan's hand. "We're very singular. Us, and the men who love us. The very, very kooky and utterly _crazy _men who love us." The elder witch flashed an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side, giving Brennan a knowing look.

Brennan smirked, then said, "Speaking of crazy, Steph, I think I may be about ready for the straightjacket." The pair exchanged another look before Brennan clarified, "You know, I think I'm only exaggerating slightly. I mean, recently I've got Dad on one hand going out of his way to talk to me about Mom, reminiscing about the good times they had, the way she was, the way things were when I was a little girl, and then, on the other hand to have Booth telling me that I need to stop worrying about the past, and to let go of the past, to live for today, and only for the future—" She stopped and let out an exasperated sigh. "Well, it's literally driving me insane, being pulled in both directions that way."

"Sometimes I feel that way," Avalon admitted. "Being driven insane by your father." The older witch stopped and made a face before she shook her head slightly. "As a matter of fact, I feel that way a lot of the times, and I always have. Then, I tell him as much, and he points out that in my case, it's a short trip."

Brennan couldn't help but laugh at Avalon's words before she then fell silent again. After a minute, she then spoke once more. "You know, Steph, I guess if we're being completely honest here," she said, sitting up straighter with a soft, vaguely unfeminine grunt as she brought her eyes to meet Avalon's directly. "I'm sure you know there's one other thing going on here that I haven't mentioned yet."

Avalon raised her eyebrows expectantly, her glossy red lips parting for a moment before she smiled in silent encouragement.

"Well, it's just that I'm afraid I won't be a good mother," Brennan said. "I mean, rationally, objectively, I know I have all of the knowledge necessary to be a good parent, to properly nourish and educate my child, and I...well..." Her words faded as she glanced down at her pregnant belly. "I know that it's a very good thing that I have Booth, you know. I mean, obviously, he's my husband and the father of this child, but it's more than that."

Avalon held Brennan's gaze for a minute before she nodded. "Tell me, Tempe," she encouraged her.

"Well," Brennan began. "It's just that...without Booth, I'm not whole. I lost a part of myself to him, eighty-some years ago. It's not that I regret doing it, but, well, since then, I only really feel whole as a person when I am with him—Booth, Angel, you know—because he's part of me. He carries part of me with him but...well, it's more than that. I'm not just part of him. He's a part of _me_. And I guess..well, I've always managed pretty well by myself, even after Chicago, when I gave up that part of my soul to Angel, and...well, although I'd never admit it to anyone other than you, I'm intimidated by the fact that I'm taking on this monumental task and there's no way in the world I could ever manage this on my own. It's unsettling to me, Steph. Maybe that doesn't make any sense, but..."

"It makes perfect sense," Avalon said in her wide, nasal voice. "And you're going to be fine, Tempe. You'll be a wonderful mother. I'm sure of it. And, if you don't believe me, I'll get the cards out if you want to, and let them tell you, hmm?"

Brennan smiled weakly as she chuckled at Avalon's offer. "No, that won't be necessary," she said. "Besides, I guess you know what you're talking about since you've made the transition successfully, right?" she asked. "I mean, to being a mother."

Avalon closed her eyes, taking a moment to remember the morning she first found out she was pregnant with Brennan's half-brother, Russ, then nodded and opened her piercing green eyes. "Of course," she said. "Having a child, and being a mother, is the most amazing of experiences, Tempe. You're going to be a great mother. And Booth? The man was born to be a father, I think. This baby of yours is lucky...so very lucky. You have no idea. And, even more than that, the two of you are going to be incredible parents." She patted Brennan on the knee as she smiled reassuringly. "I just know it."

* * *

The English vampire once known William Pratt, but known for a century or more as Spike, stared out at the darkening night skyline of New York City as the sun had almost finished setting. Standing by the window with his thumbs in the pockets of his snug black jeans, his pale blue eyes took in the dazzling lights, seeing the city twinkle more than forty stories below them, and he reveled in the hum that he'd come to have a keen appreciation for over the years even when he was so far up off the ground.

Spike liked New York. He fancied the city was a bit like he fancied himself—cultured and vibrant, with a long history and an eye always focused on the future, but with a distinct edginess born of pragmatism and, perhaps even more so, a dark sense of humor honed by decades inhabiting the margin between two worlds. He arched his head back and sighed, then reached up and scratched the back of his neck, careful not to disturb his carefully-styled blond hair as he watched a traffic jam build on the street below, the honking horns of impatient Manhattan taxis registering only as a warbling sound at this height, which insulated them from the sound as well as, Spike noted with a certain wistfulness, the frenetic energy of the city below. The steady buzz of late-night activity reminded him of London. After nearly century of traveling the world and wreaking havoc everywhere he went, none of the places he'd been excited him the way London did. He'd always preferred London, with its seedy East End and its fashionable, well-heeled West End, but after a brawl on the New York City subway with the Slayer Nikki Wood—which battle he'd won, bagging his second Slayer and walking away with her black leather duster coat as a trophy—he found himself preferring the uniquely American metropolis over his native London.

However, currently, his appreciation of the city was dimmed as he watched a familiar form who was _still _pacing in front of him.

"How do you even know it's him?" he finally asked, his Cockney accent still strong for someone who hadn't lived in London in a very long time. "The answer is that, surprise, you don't."

For her part, Buffy Summers stopped pacing as she looked up at Spike, glanced back down at a newspaper clipping from the _Washington Post _and read the headline—_FBI Agent and Scientist, An Unlikely Match, Solve Double Murder_—and shrugged her slender, shapely shoulders slightly as she considered the ensouled vampire's question.

"I just know it's him, okay?" she said.

Though it was a cool evening in New York, she stood there in the apartment in a tight pair of stonewashed jeans and a spaghetti-strap camisole with no bra, which minimalist outfit flattered her delicate dancer-like figure which belied her Slayer's speed and strength. Her muscles were tense and her voice peaked, which together with her incessant pacing, left no doubt as to her mounting anxiety.

"Peaches has disappeared for longer than this before, ya know," he told her. "I don't see what the big deal is that you've got to drop everything and go running after him if he doesn't really want to be found."

"Five years, Spike," Buffy said. "It's actually been _more _than five years since he disappeared from L.A. He hasn't made a single call or sent a text or an email or even written a damn letter to anyone—not even to Connor—in all that time."

"He's never liked many people," Spike observed dryly. "Even the Jr. McBroody." He stopped and made a face as he said, "Not that I can blame the bloke there. I mean, even I've got to admit it's a hard thing when a wee one tupps his Da's totty, even if the Da in question is Angel. That's just not right, even for someone like me, who has so very little in the way of standards." He stopped, shook his head, and then added, "Damn shame, that was."

Buffy stared at Spike, and then just shook her head. "Connor's his son, Spike. He loves him."

"You can love someone and still never want to see them, love. That's the very definition of family, if you ask me," Spike sighed.

"Not Angel," Buffy insisted. "He's not...he's not like _that_. He would've...in all this time...if he wasn't in trouble, he wouldn't have just completely stopped talking to everyone. Especially me. He's never done that before. Not once, in almost fifteen years. I mean, sure, he goes on walkabout from time to time. But, he _always _checks in eventually. But, since he hasn't, that must mean he's in trouble. So, you can damn well bet that I'm going to fly to D.C. on the first flight I can get on so I can find him and make sure he's okay."

"I can't believe this," Spike muttered. He then looked up at her and arched an eyebrow in question as he asked, "You're still hung up on him, aren't you?"

"No," Buffy said, taken a bit back by Spike's look of disgust that he shot at her, his face screwed into an unpleasant shape as if he'd just smelled something foul. "I'm not."

"Yes, you are," Spike sighed. "I can tell. I know that look, pet. Remember? I've seen you, on the random occasion, pining after him. But, bloody hell. What is it with that guy? Still? After all these years, you _still_ haven't gotten him out of your system? I mean, come on—he can't possibly have been _that _good. I suppose he must be doing something right, though, if he's got you panting after him in a dry fucking heat when you haven't even seen him in how many years?" He shook his head with a huff. "I mean, you're doing this, we both know, because you're still in love with him," Spike grumbled, his annoyance clear. "Mr. Big Ol' Bad and Broody still has you enthralled after all this time. Fuck me. He's a wanker, you _do _know that? Right? Tell me that you didn't simply somehow forget that part, did you? Because, if you did, I consider it my solemn duty to remind you. He's not _that _great. Trust me. I know. After more than a century, I feel I'm uniquely qualified when I say he's an effin' huge, bloody dick—"

"And, he'd do nothing less for me if I was the one who'd disappeared for five plus years and suddenly reappeared in a newspaper article," Buffy said, ignoring Spike's familiar tirade about Angel. "I _have _to go."

Spike pursed his lips and then shook his head. "This isn't a good idea," he said grimly. "If Angel wanted to be found, he would."

"This isn't open to debate, Spike," she said firmly. "I've made up my mind. He needs me. I'm going."

He pursed his lips before he snorted and said, "Brilliant. Far be it for me to argue with you, pet. I'm just saying that I've known that ninny of a wanker a hell of a lot longer than you have, and I'm telling you that sometimes, well—sometimes, Goldilocks, he can't be found because that's exactly how he wants it. There's nothing wrong, and there's no big scary boogie man that the dithering Hibe needs to be Lois Laned by your fancy self. He doesn't want to be found because he just _doesn't _want to be found. It's sorta his thing. It's what he does every so often. So, it's not _that _big a deal—especially if he's within fifty feet of that luscious hocus-pocus-wielding bird with the wicked blue eyes."

_There aren't too many luscious women out there with a name like that for it not to be the same Brennan,_ Spike said, trying to bite back a smirk at the thought that the centuries-old witch might have hung up her book of spells and eye of newt after all these years in order to take up a respectable avocation like crimesolving. He thought back to the last time he saw her, her face drawn with pain and worry as she sat in the waiting room at Good Samaritan Hospital in L.A. while Angel lay down the hall after emerging from a coma. He never did ask her what she was up to in Washington. _I never did ask why she'd gone there, _he thought. He nibbled the inside of his lip as he noted that Angel vanished not long thereafter. With a small nod and a shrug, he thought, _I know it's her. It's not a coincidence. It's gotta be her. I know what she is, and what she's capable of._ He glanced up from the newspaper clipping and looked up at the tense, hard-eyed blonde who was standing by the window, her body shaking in agitation. _But, I wonder if Buffy does? _

"I can't say for certain," Spike said, letting his thoughts tumble out of his mouth as he thought about Angel's on-again/off-again relationship with the English witch-turned forensic anthropologist. "But, I think that tall egghead in the blue lab coat with the stiff upper lip rather looks a _lot _like her—too much for it to be a coincidence."

Blinking at him a couple of times in abject surprise, Buffy tilted her head and asked, "Who in the hell are you talking about?"

_Oh, bloody hell, _Spike silently cursed. _She doesn't...but how can she __not__ know? I thought the Manilow-freak and her were true soulmates or whatever the fuck and shared everything, so how can she not even know who Brennan is? What the hell?_

Spike stared at Buffy for a minute, realizing that perhaps she didn't know as much about his grandsire as she thought she did. Deciding he had no desire whatsoever to enlighten her to something she didn't know since he wasn't going to be the one to get his ass in a sling when Angel finally did get around to hooking up with them again, he shook his head.

"It's nothing, love," he said. "Just...be careful. All I'm saying is this. If you go, make absolutely tootin' certain that you want to really know whatever it is that you're going there to find out. Because, I'm telling you, when you go looking for things like that, well—speaking from experience, more often as not, you may not like what you find when you get there if this bloody git really is Angel."

Buffy shook her head as she said, "Oh, it's Angel, alright. I mean, he's finally gotten his head on straight after that mess in L.A., and he's helping people again. I mean, look—you read the article. You know what it says. If that doesn't scream Angel, then I don't know what does."

"It might not be him," Spike insisted. "I mean, come on. It's not like he's ever been the establishment type, and the bloke in that article is a soddin' FBI agent. Even if there is a certain physical resemblance to the brooding ponce. I'm telling you, it's...I just have a bad feelin' about this, love." He sighed. "Look, it's probably not him."

"I told you already, Spike. I know it. It's him. It's Angel. I can just tell—I can feel it. See?" She walked up behind Spike and pointed at the photo. "Look at him—see how uncomfortable he looks in that suit? I'd know it's him just because of how awkward he looks wearing it. I mean, really, Spike...Angel never wore suits and was ever comfortable wearing them."

The vampire shot her a strange look. "Are you bloody kidding me?" he asked, his mouth hanging open as he laughed out loud at her. "Did you just suffer some kind of wacky fuckin' memory wipe? Don't you remember the whole Wolfram & Hart era, love? He wore a bloody suit, sans tie, every bleedin' day. Maybe you don't remember it, because as soon as he took that job he was a persona non grata as far as you were concerned, but still, it doesn't change the fact that the Fenian wanker not only knows how to wear a suit, though it pains me to say it, he wears one pretty damn well." He noted the nonplussed expression on Buffy's face and rolled his eyes. "You and your selective memory about things is going to land you in a mess of trouble if you keep it up."

Buffy blushed as she realized her own mistake, and remembered how she had more or less thrown Angel out of her apartment the night he came to tell her that he'd taken the job at Wolfram & Hart. "Maybe," she said with a hint of frustrated petulance. She paused and then gave him shot him another puzzled look. "Besides, what could I possibly find in D.C. that would make me unhappy? It's Angel. He's alive. I've finally found him. That's all that's important, you know. It's all that matters. I mean, really, what more is there?"

Clucking his tongue, Spike shook his head and remembered the fierce-tempered witch who fought her own battles and handled her own grievances more than a century before. _Brennan is going to do what she's gonna do, _he mused. _The way she always has, and Buffy better pray she doesn't cross paths with her because for all the things, worldly and otherwise, that she's seen over the years, she's never met anyone like ol' Elphie there. _He watched as the Slayer resumed her pacing in front of the broad, floor-to-ceiling window. _Let's hope for your sake, pet, you never will although I'm pretty damn sure you will if you decide to follow through with this fool's errand of yours. _ He shook his head again. _And, well, as for the cocky, brooding Fenian twat himself, _he thought, _the prat deserves whatever he gets as far as I'm concerned, even if Elphie ends up stuck in the crossfire, as it were. _

He then stopped to consider the Slayer's question. _'Really, what more is there?'_

Glancing out at the city lights twinkling in the distance, he muttered under his breath, "Famous bloody last words."

* * *

Max Keenan flashed his bushy blond eyebrows and waved at the security guard as he passed by, and the guard grinned as the older man walked past the guard station and down the hall towards the Medico-Legal Lab. He reached the sliding glass doors just as someone else, one of Brennan's graduate student interns judging by the young woman's gray lab coat, was walking out. He jogged up to the door, turning to the side and slipping in just in time before the doors shut with a soft _whisk _sound. He shrugged and smiled at his ability to use his charm and wits to wholly evade the Jeffersonian's security apparatus, then shoved his hands in his pockets and began to make his way towards Brennan's corner office. Max didn't hesitate, but walked along the edge of the lab with confidence, following one of his personal axioms—_if you act and look like you belong someplace, most ordinary people will think you do. _Just as he was about to round the corner to Brennan's office, he nearly collided with Angela Montenegro who was passing by from the other direction.

"Max!" she said brightly. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

Max wagged his eyebrows and smiled. "I was in the neighborhood," he said, "and I thought I'd stop in and visit my baby girl. Is she in?"

Angela pursed her lips and shook her head. "No," she said. "She just ran out to get some fresh air and—"

Max's blue eyes suddenly widened. "Really?" Glancing at his watch, he frowned when he saw the time. "But, why? Shouldn't she be getting ready to go home? I thought Booth was making her not overdo things. Is she okay?" he asked breathlessly. "I mean, she's not—"

Reaching out, Angela placed her hand on her best friend's father's shoulder. "Relax, she's fine," she said with a laugh. "Between you and Booth, I can't possibly see how she'll be left alone long enough to get herself or the baby into any trouble. She just stepped out to take a walk and get a cup of tea at the coffee cart on the Mall before calling it a day. She should be back in..." She glanced at her watch. "Fifteen or twenty minutes, maybe? Definitely well before it's completely dark. She likes taking short walks this time of day because she said it's both good exercise and helps her clear her head."

Staring at Angela a bit skeptically, Max asked, "Really?"

"Yup," Angela nodded confidently. Gesturing in the general direction of Brennan's office, she continued to humor the overanxious soon-to-be grandfather, as she added, "If you want, you can go and hang out in her office." Looking over her shoulder, she turned back to Max, winked and added, "I won't tell anyone you're here."

Taking a breath and shrugging away his worry for his only daughter, Max Keenan walked into Brennan's office and was surprised to see a familiar figure sitting on her couch, reading a magazine.

"Stephanie?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

Avalon looked up and smiled. "Matthew," she said with a smile, calling him by his true name, the name she'd known him by since she met him nearly five hundred years before. "I just came over to talk to Temperance," she explained. "We were just having a chat between us girls, you know? It's been awhile since she and I have had the chance to talk, just ourselves alone."

"She's not here," Max said, plopping himself down on the couch. "Angela told me she went out for a walk."

"I know," she replied with a smirk. "I was here when she left. She just went down to the Mall for a cup of tea. It's her late afternoon/early evening ritual."

Suddenly feeling out of touch, Max's forehead creased and he asked, "Is she okay?"

"Oh, sure," Avalon said with a wave of her hand. "Just the usual expectant mother jitters. She just needed a breath of air so she can focus on something beyond what's in her own mind. It's not an easy thing to suddenly find yourself eyeing parenthood after all these years." She shrugged with a quiet laugh and added, "But you and I know that all too well, don't we?"

Max's rigid, worried expression softened and a grin curved the edges of his mouth. "We do," he acknowledged. "You've been in that place, where she is now."

"I have," Avalon nodded. "But, it's different." He shrugged noncommittally and she said, "You know it is, Matt. After everything that happened with..." Her voice trailed off as she remembered the night that everything changed for the two of them. She remembered the date like it was just yesterday: June 13, 1971. She remembered because it was the day that the _New York Times _began to publish t_he Pentagon Papers_.

_They'd just finished watching Walter Cronkite's nightly newscast. Max stood up and walked over and switched off the TV set, then went into the kitchen to check on the tuna casserole. He pulled on the quilted yellow oven mitts and opened up the oven, poked at the bubbling cheese and breadcrumb topping with the tines of a fork, then shut the oven again with a clumsy thunk. He slipped off the mitts and tossed them on the counter, then opened the refrigerator and pulled out a can of Schaefer beer. Popping the top on the can with a crisp _fwish _sound, he took a long sip, set the can on the counter and looked at his longtime girlfriend with a smile._

"_Let's have a baby," he said, raising his bushy blond eyebrows expectantly. _

"_What?" Avalon coughed, turning to sit sideways on the olive green Naugahyde couch and crossing her legs Indian-style as she arched a puzzled eyebrow. "What did you just say?"_

_Max picked up the can of Shaefer and turned it in his hand, reading the label distractedly before setting it back on the counter and glancing back at her. "Let's have a baby," he said. "You and me."_

"_I heard you," she said, running her hand through her long, straight blond hair as she stared back at him. "But why?"_

"_Why?" His eyes widened, crestfallen at her reaction. He took another long sip of his beer and set the can down with a clank, then walked back into the cozy, compact living room of their rented Logan Square bungalow. The summer had been a hot one so far in Chicago, and even with the windows open and the two old Westinghouse oscillating fans going full-blast, one on each side of the living room, the house was still a bit balmy. He sat down on the couch next to her and put his hand on her knee._

"_Stephanie," he said, his voice low and soothing. "I love you, baby. You know that."_

"_I love you, too," Avalon replied. Her eyes narrowed, then she asked, "But why? Why a baby? And why now? After all these years, Matt? It doesn't make any sense."_

"_Exactly," he said. "After all these years, you and me, hmmmm? We've had our ups and downs, sure, but we're solid, right?"_

"_Yeah," she said with a suspicious edge to her voice. "So why do you want to change all that with a child, Matt?"_

_The smile on his face turned to a frown at her retort. "Come on, baby," he said encouragingly, stroking the side of his thumb across the top of her knee. He looked into her light green eyes and pressed his lips together as he gathered his thoughts, then smiled. "Think about it," he said. "Looking back all these years—when were we happiest, you and I?"_

_Avalon looked down at her lap, fussed with the ragged edge of her faded cut-off shorts, then brought her eyes up again to meet his. "It was a long time ago," she said, wistfully. "That first year, after Christine passed, and we got together, that was hard." Her New York accent, acquired over the three decades she'd spent living in Soho, made the word 'hard' come across as 'hahd.' "I guess it was that first Samhain after Christine's..." She rolled her lips between her teeth as she bit back the one word that, even unspoken, hung so heavy between them. "We both missed her, and Temperance—she was so lost without her mother." Max's eyes glimmered as he listened to her words. "She clung to me so much that first year or two, almost like a babe at the teat of a wet nurse."_

"_But you were so great with her," Max said, sighing as the memory of that time washed over him. "I felt so far away from her—unable to reach her, the way she'd pulled away in the wake of Christine's passing—but, baby, you were able to pull her out of that shell of hers."_

"_A bit," Avalon admitted. "It was a hard thing for her to get past."_

"_But you helped her," he said. A smile cracked his face as he gazed deep into her eyes. "You were a great mom to her, Steph. And you helped me. We helped each other through that time, didn't we? And, once we got to the other side of it, we were happy, weren't we? We had each other, and we raised Tempe together, mmm? And we were happy."_

_She nodded. "We were happy," she agreed. _

"_I want that again," Max told her. "To have that kind of happiness, you and I, like we had back then, you know—back when we weren't focused so much on ourselves, but were able to pour ourselves into raising Tempe from a girl into the beautiful, strong, brilliant woman she became."_

_Avalon pursed her lips together in a firm line and, reaching back with her hands, pulled her long blond hair into a ponytail and gave it a twist. She sighed and said, "I don't know, Matt." Letting go of her hair, she brought her hands to her lap and placed them on his hand, which still lay on her knee. "You and me, parents again, after all these years?"_

"_It's not like we're getting any older," he said. "I'm still...well..." A grin broke across his face as he leaned forward to kiss her, brushing his lips across hers with a feather-light touch. "You know I'm good for it, baby."_

"_Mmm," she murmured back as he pressed his lips to hers. She closed her long-lashed eyes and made a humming sound in her throat as she opened her mouth to his and moaned softly into his kiss, "Yeah."_

"It turned out alright for us," Max said with a charming flash of his eyebrows as he pulled Avalon's attention back from the memory to their present conversation.. "We're happy," he said. "Aren't we, baby? And we have a great son."

Avalon smiled and nodded. "We are," she said. "And we have a wonderful son—and two beautiful step-granddaughters. And now, with another grandchild on the way." She laughed as a thought occurred to her. "I have to admit, I was shocked to find out that of the two of your kids, Temperance actually beat Russ to it. Who would have thought?" Nodding to herself in amusement, she added, "Hopefully, Russ and Amy will decide to have one of their own sometime. Russ, for all of his faults, has been a good father to Emma and Hayley, and I don't know about you, Matt, but I wouldn't mind adding a boy to the mix. I love boy babies. I mean, yeah, girl babies are great...but, boy babies are just so damn fun."

"Yeah, they are," he mused. "And you're right. Russ _is _a great kid even if he does get himself in a little bit of trouble once in awhile."

"Matt!" she exclaimed. "A little bit of trouble?" Scowling at him, she shook her head emphatically. "Our son's on probation for possession of marijuana and carrying an unregistered firearm, Matt," Avalon said. "That's not just a little bit of trouble."

"It's not that big a deal, Steph," Max said. "And about that whole probation thing, need I remind you that if it had been up to me, I'd have seen to it that the cop that arrested him misplaced the paperwork before the bail bondsman even got to the jail." He paused, winked at her, then added, "Not that I've ever done that sort of thing before."

He smirked, still gloating at having the murder charge against him dropped under unusual circumstances after the prosecution was mysteriously unable to locate the key evidence linking him to the crime. Just minutes after the first witness for the prosecution, an FBI Special Agent (Booth having been removed from the case after his marriage to the accused's daughter), began his testimony and the U.S. Attorney went to retrieve the item to display it to the jury, only to discover it wasn't there. After a bit of looking around the courthouse, the U.S. Attorney and the FBI were exasperated to conclude that the item was nowhere to be found. A desperate search in the FBI evidence room still failed to turn up the vital evidence, the lynchpin of the U.S. Attorney's case. No one could explain how the evidence could have been there one minute and gone the next, but without the evidence, the case against Max was legally untenable, and so the court granted Max's attorney's motion to dismiss, making the old warlock a free man once more.

Avalon sighed. "Matt," she groaned. "It's high time Russ learn to finally live with the consequences of his actions, rather than having his daddy clean up after his messes with a flick of his wrist. After all, he's married and has a family of his own now. Matt, our boy needs to grow up and handle his own trouble."

Max rolled his eyes. "Come on," he said. "All I did was work a little memory spell so his probation officer just so happened to forget the same meeting that Russ forgot. It's not like I got him off probation altogether."

"You've been using your powers to get our son's ass out of a sling more times than I can count," she said with a long, heavy sigh. "You're not doing him any favors, Matt. You never have when you've tried to pull this crap."

Waving his hand dismissively, Max said, "You're just bitter because I still use my powers every so often—but only to protect my family—while you've hung up your ritual dagger and moved on to all that new agey tarot card reading stuff."

"Matt," Avalon sighed. "Tarot is not 'new agey'—tarot cards have been used for divination purposes since the late eighteenth century, and you..." She shot him an exaggerated, narrow-eyed look of feigned disdain. "You know it. Remember the first time we had our cards read in Paris, by Eliphas Levi back in...when was it? 1871, I guess. Anyway, you're just baiting me." She glanced at her watch and stood up from the couch. "I need to head over to the organic market to pick up a few things for dinner."

"The organic market?" Max snickered. "Yeah, sure—'not new agey' my ass." He paused for a moment, then stood up and said, "Can you pick up some of that peppermint shampoo for me? It helps with my dandruff."

With a knowing smile, she walked towards the door before she stopped and turned around again. "See you at home?" she asked.

"Yeah," Max replied as he walked over to squeeze her arm gently and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "See ya later, baby."

* * *

**-tbc-**

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**A/N2**: All these new appearances. Stephanie/Avalon...Matt/Max...even Spike and the Slayer...who apparently thinks Angel needs saving. That's can't end well, can it? Want to find out what happens next? Then, you know what to do. ::grin::


	3. Part III: A Meeting Long Overdue

**A Would-be Reunion**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

**A/N:** Umm. We think this chapter is long enough without a lot of long author notes at the beginning. We'll simply say we're back. Here's part 3. We hope everyone enjoys it. So, when last we left our intrepid heroine, Brennan had gone to get a cup of tea on the Mall at the coffee cart...

**UNF** **Alert: **Umm. Nope. Still nothing doing in that department, sadly, for some of you we know.

* * *

**Part III: A Meeting Long Overdue**

* * *

To the outside world, Dr. Temperance Brennan could quite easily pull off the lie that she didn't believe in silly things like fate or destiny. She only believed in logical and analytical things. Everything happened for a reason. For everything there was a cause, a way to understand what was occurring. There was nothing, she argued, that should be believed without significant, concrete proof.

However, to those select who _really _knew the _real _her, i.e., the fact that she was a powerful witch who had been alive since the year 1533, Brennan couldn't—to use her father's words—'really peddle that bullshit and expect us to buy it, Tempe.' The true Temperance Brennan—the one that had been alive for centuries, who wasn't quite sure what happened after death but knew that _something _did occur, who had seen and dealt with evil as she tottered on the edge of succumbing to it herself—knew better than to deny the grand plan of the universe. Things didn't happen randomly, she knew, and thus everything to Brennan was an inevitability, given the passage of enough time, which was the one thing that she, an immortal, had in abundance.

So, it wasn't a question of _if _she would finally run into a certain Slayer from Sunnydale, but merely a question of where and when. That being said, the day that it finally happened, all things being equal, wasn't really the day Brennan would've chosen for such a meeting to occur. She felt tired, unattractive, and agitated for a number of reasons, not the least of which she attributed to the occasional hormonal swing she still suffered from as she neared the end of her second trimester of pregnancy. If there was a single time when she was probably the most emotionally volatile as she'd been in recent years, it was definitely at that point in time.

Then, again, she had often wondered if there would ever be a good time to confront the Slayer, particularly given how she'd first found out about her.

_Spike stared at her for a moment, looking as contrite as a soulless vampire could be, when he shook his head and said, "Yeah, well, I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, pet, but...well, Angel staked Darla because the magnificent poof has started thinking with his little vampire head in a way that I haven't seen since the days when my good ol' grandsire was actually a decent vampire worth knowing because he wasn't bogged down with an effin' soul."_

_Licking her suddenly dry lips carefully, Brennan tilted her head and gave Spike a one-worded command that she unintentionally punctuated with a slight illumination as a spark flashed in her pale eyes. "Explain," she demanded._

_His mouth twisting into a sour grimace, Spike gestured absently with his hands. "You know he ended up hanging out near the Hellmouth in that pile o' bollocks and shopping malls in the middle of the 'burbs outside of L.A. right?" he asked her._

_Brennan nodded once as she replied in a still-dangerous tone, "Yes." The word came across nearly as a hiss._

"_Well," Spike said as he danced on the balls of his feet, some of his nervousness at seeing Brennan give off a vibe that he hadn't experienced in well over a century betraying his mindset despite his best efforts to conceal his anxiety. "It seems as if the bouncin' ninny has shacked up with some delectable if revolting little scrubber who just happens to be a bloody Slayer."_

_Her brow furrowed for the first time as Brennan considered the meaning of his words. "A Slayer?" she asked, her confusion apparent as she arched an eyebrow at him as she awaited clarification._

_Guffawing, Spike made another face as he said, "Don't tell me that you don't know what a Slayer is, Elphie. A smart bird like you who's been around the block as many times as you've been—"_

_Brennan's eyes narrowed immediately as she shot Spike a look of annoyance. He faltered for a bit as he realized what he'd said, and a hand unintentionally came up to guard his face as he took a couple of steps back from her._

"_Not that you've been around the block," Spike quickly corrected. "I didn't mean it to say you've been to the show more than a few times or that you've logged some heavy mileage, love. I didn't mean it like that at all, so please don't get all pissy and give me any more protruding members, hmmm? I like my forehead exactly as it is, thanks."_

"_William," Brennan growled. He again started at the use of his old name and probably would've paled had he been physiologically able to do so. "Get to the damn point," she muttered._

_Nodding at her, Spike gulped once and then replied, "Yeah, right, love. Anyway, the Slayer...it's just...well, a Slayer sorta has this thing that she likes to spend her time doing. She really only has one hobby, and it's a bloody pain in my arse, if you ask me. Why they've never been able to diversify and take up a useful vocation like cross-stitch or stamp collecting or scrapbooking or some other damn pastime is beyond me—" Brennan again shot Spike a look that told him if he didn't speed things up she was well on her way to hexing him again in a way that he hadn't been hexed since the late 19th century. "So, ummm, long story short, the only idea a Slayer has of having a good time is to dust little innocent ol' vamps like myself."_

_Brennan was quiet for a moment, processing the information. Of course, in the years she'd known many vampires, mention of a hated person referred to bleakly as 'the Slayer' had come up on occasion. Darla had always spoken vaguely of such persons with disdain. So, too, had Angelus. But in all her time with Angel, the talk of a Slayer had never come up. Thus, since it had never been a pressing point of concern for her, Brennan had been content to let well enough alone. Considering what Spike had just told her, she suddenly wondered if she'd made a mistake. Her brain then jumped to a paradox that made her frown._

"_Wait," she said, quickly shaking her head. "If a Slayer's sole purpose in life is to stake vampires, I don't understand. Why would Angel have anything to do with someone like that?"_

_Puffing out his lips, Spike shrugged his shoulders as a clear look of derision and disgust clouded his handsome face. "You know, pet, that's a question I'm still asking myself. Especially after that namby pamby prig went and dusted good ol' great-grandma there. And, you know what?" He paused for a beat before Brennan tilted her head at him to let him know what she was still paying attention to him intimately. Nodding at her, he continued, "Well, the only thing that I can come up with that even remotely offers a good answer to this bloody little puzzle is that the little vampire brain between his legs is in the driver's seat as far as that brooding poofster's concerned because ever since he got one whiff of that blonde slapper's—"_

"_Spike," Brennan snapped, cutting him off. Looking up at him, her blue eyes flashing in annoyance as she pursed her lips._

_Wincing slightly, Spike refrained from continuing on his tirade. Shrugging at her, he then said, "Look. You want facts? Here they are. Angel's not the same—even compared to his normal loathsome self since he got re-ensouled by the Gypsies. And, why ever he's decided to change...well, here's what I know about her, love. She's blonde, petite, very young, and her name is Buffy."_

For a very long time, that was more or less all that Brennan knew about the young Slayer with whom Angel had fallen in love—she knew from Spike that the Slayer was blonde, petite, very young, and her name was Buffy. From time to time, she would hear more about the young woman from Spike, but from Angel himself, she had learned almost nothing. He didn't speak of her, even in retrospect, unless Brennan raised the subject, and even then, he was always reticent to discuss the Slayer or his relationship with her. Brennan suspected that this reticence was born of guilt on Angel's part. She knew he regretted what had happened between the two of them which had driven them each into the arms of other lovers, and he seemed more interested in brooding about his time in Sunnydale than anything else. At some level, Brennan was willing to let the subject lie most of the time, and so even though the affair represented the lowest point of their 150-year relationship, she really knew very little concrete factual information about the Slayer except for one thing she knew very, _very _well: she hated her.

The hate was born out of a number of things. First, and foremost, Brennan hated the fact that for a time, albeit however brief, the Slayer had replaced _her_. The inherent rejection in that replacement had made her feel as if she hadn't been good enough for Angel in some way, shape, or form and that was a feeling that lingered for her no matter how much she battled to put the insecurity to rest for good. She also hated the fact that, like some exotic fungus, just when she thought she'd finally eradicated all traces of the Slayer from her mind, for some reason something would happen to remind Brennan of her existence. Thoughts of the Slayer would cause Brennan to focus too much on the past to the point that she would allow those old thoughts, feelings, and mentalities to cloud her current mindset. That was the third reason she hated the Slayer: simply the mere thought of her was enough to rattle Brennan's cool, calm, and measured rational demeanor back to the days of passionate if volatile emotionality that she hadn't displayed since the end of the nineteenth century.

For all those reasons and more, Brennan thought it a very good thing that she and the Slayer had never come face to face. Some things, as Booth had often told her, were better left in the past because, the simple truth of the matter was, she wasn't certain how badly things would go if the two ever did cross paths for some reason. So, of course, it went without saying that fate or the universe or whatever fulfillment of the divine grand plan would cause the two women to eventually meet—and eventually meet they did...with spectacularly explosive results.

On the day it finally happened, for her part, Buffy Summers was pissed. She had made the journey from New York the day before, having encountered annoying snags all along the way—starting with a nearly two-hour delay at LaGuardia that caused her to arrive at Dulles late, only to find that the airline had lost her bag—and she arrived at the J. Edgar Hoover Building that morning with a rare case of nerves which was only made worse by her inability to fall asleep the night before. Once at the Hoover, she approached the security desk in the lobby and asked for Special Agent Seeley Booth. The FBI security guard gave her a skeptical, narrow-eyed look and, checking his clipboard and noting that she wasn't 'on the list,' asked her if she had an appointment with Agent Booth. She lied and said yes, but when the guard phoned upstairs to Booth's office, he was told that the Supervisory Special Agent was in a meeting and would be tied up all morning. Knowing that she was lying, and his patience at an end with the young woman's gruff behavior, the guard immediately suggested it was time for her to leave. Buffy had tried to protest once again, maintaining a relaxed and calm demeanor as she did so, but her irksome persistence merely caused the original guard to signal for assistance. The eventual outcome of the Slayer's deception was her prompt dismissal from the Hoover Building under the watchful eyes of two of the original guard's armed compatriots. Her attempts to obtain admittance to the building were completely rebuffed and by the time she wandered out onto the National Mall, she was tired, frustrated and loaded for bear. On top of everything else, the humidity hung in the air, clinging to her skin in a way that made her miss Los Angeles and its dry Santa Ana winds.

_God, this place sucks, _she thought to herself as she stared at the Reflecting Pool. _Everybody here thinks they're some kind of big effin' deal because they work for the government, and they're hell-bent to show you just how freakin' important they are with their badges and the whole nine yards. _A scowl pinched her face as she recalled the tone of the FBI guard's voice when he told her that Special Agent Booth was 'not available.' The flicker in his eyes and way he looked at her across the desk made her want to punch kittens. _These people have no idea—no idea who I am or what I can do. They're just caught up in their fancy Washington D.C. bubble. They don't have a flying clue what life's like in a big city where demons are crawling out of every goddamn sewer drain. The nerve they have to treat me like this. _She clenched her fists and growled behind gritted teeth as she spied a food cart of some sort in the distance. _Maybe I just need a cup of coffee, _she wondered. _Even _if _the coffee here is probably shit, too._

Buffy rolled her eyes and quietly groaned, as she surveyed the food cart's patrons—almost all of them power-broker types clad in coats and ties, or the female suit equivalent and matching pumps—with a disdainful glance. _People here really think they're all that and a friggin' bag of chips, _she muttered to herself. _And people say New York is full of itself. Manhattan's got nothing on the 'tudes people sport down here. _She snorted and took a deep breath, then hitched her purse more snugly against her shoulder and began to make her way towards the cart, shrugging to herself as she dryly noted that there was only one customer standing in front of the cart clad in anything resembling casual clothes—a pregnant woman in a snug pair of dark blue jeans and black flats. Buffy shook her head again. _Yeah. D.C. definitely isn't New York. Definitely._

It was once again late afternoon, almost early evening really, and Brennan had gone for her daily walk on the Mall. She'd come to enjoy the short jaunts more than she ever thought she would, almost as much as she'd come to savor the cup of tea she procured before she would head back to the Jeffersonian. On this particular day, Brennan was exchanging pleasantries as she did each day while she waited for her tea to finish steeping. She stood in front of the coffee cart at the Mall, enjoying the pungent smell of the tea's aroma as it wafted up to greet her nose. She'd been drinking decaf Irish tea for several months, ever since she'd found it she was pregnant, and despite her initial distaste for it, she had been drinking it for so long**—**and having done without the caffeinated version for the same amount of time—that it actually tasted pretty good to her.

It didn't even gall her that much anymore that the whole reason she'd been able to start ordering the beverage from Terry, the kind old proprietor of the coffee cart, was because Booth had sweet-talked him into stocking the decaf tea once they'd found out that Brennan was pregnant. Terry had always had an affinity for Booth because of the latter's ever-present smile and easy-going manner. Once he found out that the Bronx-born Terry was a longtime fan of the New York Rangers, Booth had taken to bantering with the old man about ice hockey, which teasing Terry had returned in spades whenever Booth's beloved Philadelphia Flyers dropped a game to their bitter rivals from New York.. Additional conversations that revealed that Terry had done two tours in Vietnam as a cook assigned to the 101st Airborne Division's 187th Infantry Regiment—the same unit Booth served in during Desert Storm—had sealed the deal in which forever after, Terry viewed Booth as his long-lost adopted son.

Not against taking advantage of Booth's ability to charm people into getting what he wanted if it meant she could have the tea she liked**—**or had at least convinced herself that she liked since she couldn't drink the caffeinated version**—**she again assured Terry she didn't want the tea over ice. Despite the heat of the day, Brennan actually felt quite comfortable.

She was wearing a loose fitted square neck cotton royal blue knit top that amply displayed her pregnancy-enhanced bosom. She knew she wouldn't be able to wear the pair of dark blue maternity jeans she was wearing for much longer, so she'd decided to take advantage of her remaining days while she could. Her ensemble was completed by a simple pair of black leather sandals which possessed absolutely no heel whatsoever. She wore little makeup these days, both because of the heat and the fact that Angela said pregnancy gave her a dewy complexion that no makeup company had yet to figure out how to bottle. Her cheeks were rosy of their own accord, although her lips did shine with the clear gloss she'd applied throughout the day to keep them nice and soft. Her hair was pulled up into a messy ponytail that she'd originally arranged her hair into when she'd been working on the platform. From her ears dangled a pair of pear-shaped blue topaz earrings that Booth had given her the day after she'd told him she was pregnant, a piece of jewelry he'd purchased for her because he said it reminded him of her 'sexy eyes when they're getting ready to go all wicked witchy' on him.

After she was satisfied that the tea had steeped long enough, she continued to chit chat with Terry about how she felt and the progression of her pregnancy. She assured him that no, they weren't going to find out the sex of the baby prior to her delivery if for no other reason than she knew not knowing was driving Booth crazy. She also agreed that Booth was being wonderful in following all of her very specific instructions about how she wanted the nursery painted. Tossing the used tea bag in a nearby garbage can, she dumped enough sugar and milk into the paper cup and began to stir its contents to her satisfaction. After another minute, she popped the white plastic lid back on the cup and lifted it up to meet her waiting lips. She savored the first sip, flashed Terry a small smile to reassure him that, as ever, the tea was more than acceptable by even her high standards. Saying goodbye to him, she turned away from the cart and was about to head back in the direction of the Jeffersonian when it happened.

Buffy approached the food cart and was disappointed to discover that it was not, in fact, a food cart of the sort she was used to seeing all over New York. Suppressing her craving for a hot dog, she decided that what she really needed more than a snack was an infusion of caffeine and so began passing through a group of small tables as she squinted at the menu mounted on the side of the cart. It was at that point that she realized that the twitchy feeling she was feeling in her limbs was something more than a yen for a simple latte. She'd felt that feeling before—a swirling sense of foreboding that gnawed at her belly and made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end—in the presence of powerful evil, and it took her completely by surprise given her location at that moment, and the fact that she really hadn't felt the presence of demon-kind since taking off from LaGuardia. Rolling her neck a little as she tried to shake the feeling, she turned her head and saw a strangely-familiar figure walking towards her.

_It can't be, _she thought, reaching into the back pocket of her skirt and fishing out the crumpled newspaper article she'd brought with her. The newspaper clipping was worn from having been folded and unfolded a hundred times or more since she'd left New York the day before. Unfolding it once more, she glanced at the photo above the text and, for the first time, took a good look at the woman in the photo next to the suited agent, then glanced up at the approaching woman. She felt a flash of inspiration as she thought that this woman might be able to do for her what the stubborn FBI guard could not: get her access to the man she'd known as Angel. As the woman passed her, Buffy turned on her heel and reached out, grazing the woman's arm with her hand.

"Excuse me," she said.

Brennan's immediate response at the unfamiliar touch was to twist away from the stranger's hand. She easily spun out of the grip with a small grunt while using her opposing force to give the individual a slight shove. Calling over her shoulder, she resumed walking as she said confidently, "You're excused."

Buffy cocked her head to the side and grimaced at the woman's response. She snorted under her breath, then took a couple of hopping steps as she followed her. "I'm sorry," she said. "But are you by chance Dr. Temperance Brennan?"

Brennan slowed her step and turned around to face the woman. "Yes," she answered. She then gave the blonde a curt nod, turned away and began walking again.

"No, wait, ummm," Buffy stuttered, quickly catching up with the slow-gaited woman again as she reached for her shoulder. She gently pulled at the woman's shoulder, hoping to encourage her to turn around again as she said, "Dr...uhh...Brennan?"

This time, when it was clear to her that the woman had not touched her by accident, Brennan felt a flash of irritation. She quickly grabbed the younger woman's hand and wrenched at it hard. As her swollen body turned a bit less quickly than she normally would've, she didn't have quite the requisite force to push the other woman away from her as far as she usually would have been able to do. However, the slight misjudgement of her center of gravity did cause her to lose her balance and her cup of tea toppled out of her hand. The cup exploded between the pair, soaking Brennan's jeans and feet while also staining the Slayer's skirt. Flashing an angry stare at her, Brennan took a defensive stance as she finally spoke.

"Don't...touch...me," she growled. "If you touch me for a third time, I can assure you that the cup of decaf Irish tea that you just ruined for me**—**thank you very much, by the way**—**will be the least of your problems."

Buffy tried to resist her impulse to snark back to the uppity woman and silently reminded herself that this woman was possibly her best chance to obtain access to the man she had come to Washington to see. She hesitated for a moment, then said, "I'm sorry, it's just that..." Her voice trailed off for a moment as she tried to remember what she'd read in the article about her, struggling for some way to open up a conversation with the woman who quite clearly was not interested in being pleasant. "I'm a fan of your books and all," she lied, wincing slightly as she hoped Brennan wouldn't press her on any of the details of the books that she'd never even seen much less read.

Giving the younger woman a strange look, Brennan quickly shook her head as she said, "I already have my quota of stalkerish fans, thank you. The president of that particular subset is Oliver Laurier. If you Google his name, his website will come up. I suggest you contact him. Thank you for your patronage and support, but you really do need to leave me alone now before I contact the United States Park Police and report you for assault, battery, and harassment."

Taking a breath, Buffy looked into Brennan's eyes and saw in their cool color a heat that made the hair on her arms stand on end. There was indeed something strange and sinister about this woman, but she wasn't exactly sure what it was. However, she knew she had to take a different tack if she was going to have a prayer at using her to get access to Angel, so she gave the woman a soft, almost sheepish smile and shrugged.

"No," she said. "It's not that...you see, I've been reading about the work you do, apart from the books you write and..." Buffy's voice trailed off as she realized she was quickly painting herself in a corner without having any idea what she actually wanted to say. She silently cursed herself for being so impulsive in leaving New York and not planning this better. "You know, I mean...the, uhhh, work you do with the FBI, you know...solving murders and everything. It's very admirable and..." She winced again, annoyed as it seemed that every word that came out of her mouth sounded absolutely idiotic. Knowing that the more foolish she sounded, the less and less likely it was that Brennan was going to be anything resembling cooperative, she decided to cut straight to the point. "And, anyway, I was hoping that maybe you could help me get in contact with your partner..."

Brennan stared at her again, sizing her up, before she arched an eyebrow at her and asked, "And why would I do that?"

Surprised at that point that Brennan seemed even willing to engage at all, Buffy pursed her lips for a moment, then said, "Because we've both known your partner for a long time and know that he's always up for seeing an old friend." After a few seconds of pause, she added, "I was hoping he'd stop by Sunnydale before he left L.A., but he didn't." Then she fell silent again, her eyes narrowing as she watched for Brennan's reaction.

Something about the younger woman's bearing caused Brennan to feel goosebumps break out all over her body at the same time the small hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up on end. Her already rapid heart rate increased, even as she felt a fresh surge of adrenaline course through her. The set of natural instincts that had served her so well over four and a half centuries screamed at her that a source of danger was approaching. It took Brennan only a moment or two to realize that only one person could ever make her feel this way since there was only one thing she was truly afraid of losing—Booth.

_Sunnydale_, a voice muttered in Brennan's mind. _A petite, nauseatingly perky blonde from Sunnydale randomly looking for Booth? It couldn't be. No, it couldn't be. Not...not..._

_The Slayer._

Knowing intrinsically that she was right, Brennan forced herself to breathe as she tried to fight back a wave of lightheaded dizziness that she knew might turn to nausea if she wasn't careful. So, she made herself slow down as she employed the rational skills of scientific observation that had helped ground her during the past century when science had become the one thing that could bring order to chaos. She knew she needed more information before she proceeded or else she could quickly end up on the losing end of the long anticipated, long feared, and long overdue encounter. Dreading such a possibility, Brennan retreated so that she could press the advantage that she had, i.e., that she knew who the Slayer was and that she was in D.C.—Brennan's home turf that afforded the forensic anthropologist another advantage even as she realized it—even if the Slayer had no clue who she really was. So, she stopped, she waited, she observed, and she colloquially sized up her enemy.

The first thing that she noticed was that, despite the fact that it had been ten years since she'd last seen her—even if they'd never been what one might call properly introduced—she could still see the Slayer from Sunnydale was still disgustingly blonde and disgustingly petite. Brennan's jaw clenched as she surveyed the Slayer's slender form, clad in a short blue-jean skirt and a white, long-sleeved, ballet-necked cotton sweater that was so thinly knit that it looked almost sheer and, had the younger woman not been wearing an ivory colored lace camisole underneath, the garment would have been jaw-droppingly revealing. Her eyes glancing down at her own swollen midsection, Brennan suddenly felt twice as large, with an even bigger center of gravity, than she had just a mere sixty seconds earlier. Compared to the Slayer, Brennan knew she was older, but also taller and more curvy, her pregnancy-enhanced bodily attributes aside. She stood at least five, but perhaps as many as six inches taller than the Slayer. She also knew that the small amount of weight that she'd put on during the first two trimesters of her pregnancy aside, on a good day she had probably twenty to twenty-five pounds on the blonde—and, Brennan, in all her years, had never thought of herself as overweight since she rarely weighed more than 130 pounds at her heaviest. Still, as she took stock of the younger woman—in more ways than one—Brennan's insecurities flared as she made her decision and decided that, for once, she wouldn't wait for trouble to come to her. Instead, she would go to it...confronting it head on, come what may.

"You have absolutely no business with him," Brennan said, her voice curt in its sharpness. "None whatsoever."

"Come again?" Buffy coughed, taken aback by Brennan's curtness in response to a comment that the Slayer had supposed would have gotten the older woman talking. With a flash of frustration, she said, "I'm sorry—what's your problem?"

Brennan's eyes widened. Her mouth twisted into a sneer and a hundred potential verbal barbs jumped to her mind as she almost salivated at finally being able to lob an appropriate insult at the young woman. She'd thought about such a potential scenario playing out countless times in her head. Taking a breath, she finally went with the simple truth.

"My problem," Brennan began. "Is and has been**—**for about the last fifteen years or so**—**well..." She paused for a beat and a smirk briefly flashed across her mouth before vanishing again as she completed her statement with a pointed inflection on her final word. "_You_."

Buffy's brow furrowed, and her hard green eyes narrowed as she glared back at the snarling pregnant woman whose cool blue orbs flickered with a brightness and an energy that made the Slayer strangely uneasy.

Ignoring the look Buffy shot her, Brennan shook her head and said sharply, "This isn't Sunnydale, Slayer—for that's who I assume you are, correct?"

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Brennan saw Buffy's body tense as she took a half-step back.

"Okay," Buffy said, looking at her with suspicious eyes. "So since you know who I am, why don't we even things up and you tell me who you are—I mean, really?"

"Not anyone who's going to harm you, though don't think I haven't thought about doing it," Brennan scoffed. "Often, and in many various ways, always involving scenarios in which your body would never be found."

Buffy quirked an eyebrow and laughed. "You've actually fantasized about offing me?" she asked. "Well, that's a new one. Insecure much, Dr. Brennan?"

Shaking her head, Brennan waved her off dismissively. "If I'd really wanted you dead, you already would be," she assured the younger woman. "Believe me."

"I've already been dead a couple of times," the Slayer said casually. "It's not so bad, so I'm not particularly afraid of doing it again. Besides," she said. "I'm sorta used to the whole big-bad-scary people trying to kill me thing, so if you're trying to use that as your angle, I gotta tell you that you might want to get a new spiel. That one's sorta old."

Brennan had leaned forward and was about to respond when she felt someone approach her from behind. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Terry, the coffee cart proprietor, standing there with a fresh and steaming cup of what she presumed to be decaf Irish breakfast tea.

"Dr. Brennan," he said with an easy smile. "I saw you had a bit of a mishap with your tea, so here's a new one." Handing her the cup, he gave the young woman standing next to her an appraising glance, then turned to his longtime customer again. "It's just like you like it, extra sugar, extra milk—not cream. So, please, take it and enjoy. You can have a seat here—" He gestured to a nearby table. "And you can have your tea and relax for a few moments because I know that husband of yours wouldn't want you standing on this hard pavement too long. So really—why don't you take a load off and sit?" He looked up and jerked his chin in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial. "Seems like a nice breeze is rolling in across the Reflecting Pool, Dr. Brennan. Perfect timing, wouldn't you say? So sit, please, enjoy your tea and rest."

Considering his words—and knowing that he really would call Booth if she wasn't careful were she to seem to become too agitated and that was the very _last _thing she wanted with the Slayer in such close proximity—she regarded him with a smile and a nod, she said, "Thank you, Terry." The old man smiled and patted her on the arm, then turned and walked back to his cart, where a small queue of new customers had already begun to gather.

As soon as he left them, Brennan's jaw tightened and then she gestured at the table on which she'd set down her cup. "I think you and I should sit down, Miss Summers."

"Why?" Buffy asked, her disdain for Brennan and any thoughts, opinions, or preferences that the older woman might have clear in her voice and bearing.

Brennan swallowed the urge she had to hit the blonde woman as hard as she could. Instead, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to exhale it slowly, she eventually felt collected enough to respond. "Because," she answered, her jaw tightening even as she went against her natural instinct to not put herself on the same level as the Slayer, even for a brief moment, and even if she was doing it to explain why the uppity blonde should go far, far away from D.C. never to return. "Believe it or not, contrary to the ego that has made you a legend in your own mind, you don't know everything, Miss Summers. Now, you are going to sit down and be quiet because I know why you're here, and I'm in a position to save you a lot of time which, in turn, will save me a lot of frustration and irritation."

Buffy, clearly affronted at Brennan's even more brusque demeanor than that which she'd displayed even five minutes earlier, arched a well groomed blonde eyebrow at the pregnant woman's ungainly form. "That so?" she finally uttered.

Swallowing another snarl, Brennan grunted, "Yes."

Pursing her lips in a clearly exaggerated way, Buffy finally tilted her head and then responded, a heavy taint of suspicion obviously clouding her voice. "So like some grand know-it-all, you're what...like the wise and all-knowing Oz or something? You really think you know why I'm here?"

"Yes," Brennan replied, her words still clipped so that she didn't say too much, lest she say something she knew she shouldn't say out loud no matter how much she really wanted to do so. "I do."

Buffy licked her lips, tilted her head, still not backing down as she again challenged Brennan. "Okay," she finally nodded responded. "I'll bite just so I can tell you to go fish." She smiled at her own quip, but when Brennan had no response, the Slayer rolled her eyes and then asked, "So what is it that you _think _you know exactly?"

Brennan stared at the blonde for a very long minute, never breaking eye contact—note even for a millisecond—before she answered, "I know why you think you're here in D.C., even though the reason you think you're here is _completely _wrong, by the way."

The younger woman's eyes narrowed once more, betraying her emotional response to Brennan's snide manner. "And, how would you know that?" she asked as she crossed her arms, her body tensing as she became more and more annoyed by the other woman's scornful demeanor. "Don't tell me. One of your party tricks is to read minds?"

Smirking, Brennan responded, "Hardly." She paused for a beat before she added, "However, if I were capable of such a feat, I can assure you that your underdeveloped frontal lobe would pose no significant challenge for me to be able to read."

"Is that so?" Buffy snarked back, blinking briefly and glancing downward as she wondered if the other, very buxom woman was insulting her more modest chest. Hearing the tone of Brennan's voice and figuring that whatever chance she had at smoothly persuading the scientist to help her gain access to Angel had gone completely down the tubes by that point, she decided not to bother holding back anymore. "You really do think you're God's gift to the world, don't you?" she asked with a sneer. "No wonder you sit in a boring old laboratory all day long along with your test tubes and microscopes and other inanimate objects. I mean, it's not like anyone with a heartbeat and the ability to breathe would ever be able to put up with someone like you. Really, be honest now. Have you ever had a single person in your entire life who actually _wanted _to deal with you?"

Brennan's jaw stiffened briefly, then relaxed again.

"As I said, Slayer, despite what you think—on that or any of another countless number of topics I could bring up at the current moment, not that your thoughts on any subject are really of any interest or concern me once you leave the confines of the District of Columbia—you _are _incorrect," she told Buffy. "You aren't here because you're going to save him. He's fine. In fact, he's better than fine. He doesn't need to be saved, least of all by you. And, so, you should sit down with me so I can give you some concrete specific examples to support my assertions, then you can turn around and head back to whatever Hellmouth you've been trolling for your next hook up."

Brennan punctuated her declaration with a dismissive gesture of not bothering to wait for Buffy's answer as she sat walked to one of the nearby tables and sat down with a soft grunt that she immediately mentally chastised herself for letting escape from her lips. She then turned her head and looked over when she was situated as comfortably as possible given her ungainly body.

"So, wait," the Slayer said. "So you think I'm here for some kind of long-distance booty call? I don't know what kind of people you're used to dealing with, but you've got another thing coming, Dr. Brennan, if you can pull some kind of bitchy-ass attitude and run me out of town five minutes after I got here." She paused for a moment, then snorted and said, "I mean, really."

As Brennan watched the Slayer staring at her, she merely shrugged her shoulders in response. She then offered, "Like I said, stay if you want to stay...but only do so with the understanding that you'll be staying only long enough to hear what I have to say and then you'll be leaving the District promptly...one way or another."

Buffy, knowing that if she wanted to talk to Angel that Brennan was her only hope, finally conceded. She smirked once at the older woman and then plopped down on the opposite side of the table at which Brennan had seated herself. The pair stared over the length of the table, each silent with their own thoughts running through their minds as the said not out loud.

Brennan's blue eyes narrowed again as she looked at the young woman in front of her. _So this is her. After all this time, after all these years, after all the ups and downs I've taken on a metaphorical emotional rollarcoaster...this is the Slayer. The woman who almost took him away from me. The woman who almost cost me my future. She's finally here, and I'm finally talking to the fucking Slayer...and __this__ is the who's made my life so fucking miserable for 15 years?_ _Really?_

On the other side of the table, Buffy felt her jaw shift and her teeth grind together as she stared at the woman across the table from her. _Who the fuck is this chick? _she asked herself. _ She's acting like some kind of magical-ass gatekeeper charged with keeping Angel safe from...from __me__? From me...of all people! __From me__! As if he's __ever__ needed protecting from me. What the hell? I don't even know what the fuck she thinks she's protecting him from, but if she thinks serial killers and gangland types have anything on the nasties that Angel and I spent years dealing with in Sunnydale, well...she's a total first-class delusional nutwad. And if she thinks she means anything to him compared to...well, compared to what I mean to him, or what he means to me...well, she's just completely and totally and certifiably whack._

After another minute, the Slayer was the first to speak. "So," she said, leaning forward and intertwining her fingers as she propped her elbows up on the table. "I've stayed. I've sat. And I've done so without kicking your ass, Dr. Brennan. So now it's your turn to deliver. Tell me why you think you know _anything _about me."

This time, Brennan legitimately laughed as she shook her head and answered, "Oh, that's simple, Miss Summers. I know a lot more about you that I ever hoped or cared to know because I make it my business to know anything and everything about the man you've been looking for...the man you think you've come here to find." She paused, raised her eyebrows with a simple shrug, then added, "It's as simple as that, really."

The words hung in the air between them for a few moments. As the silence wore on, Brennan's lip curled up on one side and her brow arched as she gave the young Slayer a narrow-eyed look laced with equal parts of smugness and disdain as she waited to see how the other woman would respond.

"And, _who _exactly do you think I'm here to find?" Buffy asked as she tilted her head at Brennan**, **rolling her jaw a little as she felt a vague desire to physically wipe the smirk off Brennan's face, but the aura of dangerousness that hung about the other woman was enough to give her pause.

"Angel," she said softly, her face also softening as she spoke the single word.

Buffy narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to one side as she looked skeptically at the older, taller woman, baffled as to what kind of tack Brennan was trying to take—on the one hand, apparently willing to be fairly candid about what she knew about the ensouled vampire, but had seemingly been quite deliberate in avoiding saying his name up to that point in their conversation. The woman's manner struck her as bizarre, and the edginess about her gave Buffy a very palpable sense of the creeps.

She felt the hair on the back of her neck prick up at the mention of her old lover, her very first love, the man who had taken her into his arms and made her feel a way no one else had ever felt before—both emotionally and physically—on a cold, rainy night years before, on the night of her seventeenth birthday. _Even if it did go so horribly wrong_, she thought, a touch of sadness and regret washing over her that she quickly pushed away as she thought of how her relationship with Angel had never been the same for them after that point. So much had happened between them, and had gotten between them, over the ensuing years, and the gulf that opened between them, especially after he'd left Sunnydale, had never really narrowed. He'd been keeping his distance from her, and he'd done it for years, never really trying to change the status quo between them.

_But that's okay, _she'd told herself. _I'm over it. I'm over it, and I'm over him_. _He did what he had to do, just like I did. _How many times had he told her he couldn't be with her, fearful as he was that if he got too close again, he'd be unable to control himself and he'd unleash the darkness inside of him?

Yet even though he moved out of Sunnydale and down to L.A., he'd never gone as far as cutting off ties with her completely, and had actually made the trip up to be with her the night after her mother's funeral. He'd sat with her underneath an oak tree at the cemetery and held her, reassuring her in that soft, low, rich, rumbly voice of his that stirred up the same warm, tingly feeling in her belly that it had the night they made love, the night she found happiness in him only to find him wrenched from her by the terms of a curse she didn't completely understand. She remembered kissing him under the oak tree and feeling herself being pulled under by the strength of her feelings for him. A part of her had wanted to lose herself in him again, but another part of her knew she had to walk away, lest she let herself be drawn into another supernatural drama of epic proportions, like some kind of twisted remix of _Romeo and Juliet_, where the rivalry between Montagues and Capulets was the eternal war between darkness and light, and two of them were cast as the star-crossed lovers trapped by the workings of prophecies, legends, and curses far bigger than they.

She sighed and shrugged as she shook away the thought. _I don't need him, _she'd reminded herself one more time, as she had often done again and again over the years whenever she'd hear news of him and his life in Los Angeles. _I've moved on. He moved on. We both moved on. Period. That's the show, folks. The end._

And she had moved on, in fact, trying to fill the Angel-sized hole in her life with a series of men, only one of whom—Angel's grandchilde, Spike—had even come close to stirring in her the kind of passion she'd that felt for Angel.

_Angel. _

Buffy felt something—not regret, exactly, but more of a gnawing sense that she'd let something amazing slip through her fingers—as she remembered the night he'd shown up on the doorstep of her apartment on the outskirts of Sunnydale. She'd pushed him away and almost lost him forever, and she felt a soreness, an ache in the pit of her stomach that reminded that she couldn't let him go again without a fight. _Not this time, _she told herself. _I won't make the same mistake I did before. Just about every time before, he was the one who came to me, but this time it'll be different. I'll come to him...and maybe it won't turn out as badly as it did the last time he and I were in the same time and same place for more than five minutes would either one of us worrying about needing to fight an imminent apocalypse._

She paused for a minute, lost in her numerous memories of Angel, before she finally settled on one that had always particularly bothered her because of how badly it had ended between them.

_It was nearly midnight on a Tuesday night, and she'd been watching reruns of _Family Ties_ on cable when there had been a series of sharp knocks at the door. The pattern of the knocks—three quick raps, a short pause, and another two—was one that she'd immediately recognized. Suddenly realizing that she'd spent the last two hours in front of her TV set watching back-to-back episodes of VH1's 'Behind the Music' and eaten an entire pint of mocha-chip ice cream in the process, she felt a flash of self-conscious vanity and paused to check her hair in the mirror in her foyer then, grumbling under her breath about the late hour, she unchained the the lock on the door and opened the double deadbolt locks before she'd swung it open. As soon as she'd seen him standing there expectantly on her 'Home Sweet Home' doormat, her brows had furrowed, and her lip curled._

"_What are you doing here, Angel?" she asked, her eyes widening as her voice caught in her throat at seeing him. She stumbled a couple of steps back, wobbling a little on her feet as she succombed, if only temporarily, to a wave of competing emotions that made her heart race and her stomach clench. She felt surprise at seeing him again after all this time, and a twitter of desire, the same way she had the last time she'd seen him, her mind instantly calling forth the memory of the night he'd made love to her for the very first time on the one perfect night they had together. As she felt her heart flutter in her chest, she felt something else—a wave of annoyance at herself for letting her feelings get the better of her. She gritted her teeth and took a deep breath, saying nothing as she shot him a hard glare._

_Angel quirked an eyebrow and shook his head. "What?" he coughed, apparently surprised by her terseness. "Huh?"_

_It had been a while since she'd seen him last, and she immediately noticed the change in his appearance. His hair was trimmed shorter on top, and he was using less of the styling gel he used to apply quite liberally to his hair when he'd lived in Sunnydale. More surprising, he seemed to have forsaken his usual dark shirt and black leather duster in favor of a dressier, business-casual look. It reminded her of how the guys at Sunnydale High dressed on the days when they had mock business interviews. His outfit—a sport coat, black slacks, and white button-down shirt—reminded her a little of the way he'd dressed when she first met him in Sunnydale, wearing much the same thing. She glanced down at his shoes and found herself doing a double-take. For years she'd seen him wear lace-up black boots with deeply-treaded lug soles, but he stood there in a pair of expensive-looking dark brown slip-on loafers that she'd have sworn were made of calfskin. If it weren't so bizarre, she might have laughed, but the overall look struck her as so un-Angel-like, she couldn't help but shake her head and grimace. _

"_So...umm...what's with the corporate look, Angel?" she asked him, her voice speaking as a little smirk curved the corner of her mouth. A part of her wanted to make a further comment about Halloween being still some months away, but she held back__because she really didn't want to see him or spend any more time with him than absolutely necessary—and because she didn't want any light-hearted banter between them to lead him to think that anything between them was in any way, shape, or form even close to being the way it used to be. _

"_Buffy," he sighed. His brow creased and he looked over her shoulder into the small one-bedroom apartment, then his eyes followed the line of the door frame. "Can you invite me in, please? I don't have a lot of time, and I really don't want to play twenty questions out here in the hall."_

"_Fine," she replied tartly, opening the door all the way as gestured for him to enter. "What, you want me to tell you 'mi casa es su casa' or something, huh?" She snorted under her breath, then rolled her eyes. "Whatever," she huffed. "If you're coming in here, fine. Then get your ass in here, Angel." She watched him walk in, surveying the apartment and its furnishings as he made his way through the entryway into the living room. "Now, what do you want?" she asked, her voice reflecting the tightness that held her jaw rigid as she stared at him._

"_Nice to see you, too, Buffy," Angel replied with a sigh__**,**__ his nostrils flaring as he caught a confusing whiff of scents swirling around her. He detected an almost imperceptibly faint hint of arousal on her part—which smell made him squirm a little as he tried to fight off the inevitable tug of his body's habitual response for hers—but more so, he could smell a simmering anger, which hit his nose like smoked paprika. The scent of her anger confused him, because even though they'd been estranged for years, he'd never thought things between them had soured that badly. He'd expected their reunion would be awkward, but the way she seemed to almost snarl at him left him feeling unsettled and unbalanced. "I'd have thought after all this time, you'd have...what?"_

_She stared at him for a few seconds, clearly unimpressed by his approach. She then shook her head and muttered, "Cut the crap, Angel. I know you wouldn't know this since it's been God knows how long since either one of us gave two shakes about what the other one was doing, but I don't always keep the same hours as you do these days. Unlike some people, I have bills to pay and normal-human things to do besides what vamps I can dust and evil forces I can fight in my spare time. So, for me, it's late, and I have to be at work for an eight o'clock meeting, okay? I really don't have any time for you to mess around, so let's get straight to the point so I can get to bed, hmmm?"_

_Angel turned his head away, muttering something inaudible before he brought his gaze back to meet hers. "Fine," he said, his voice losing some of its weariness as he responded. "This won't take long. Then you can go back to whatever you were doing."_

_Yawning, more to make a point and illustrate her earlier words than anything else, Buffy nodded at him. "Great," she said. "Then, what is it? Why are you here?"_

_Swallowing once, Angel tilted his head as he looked over at her and said, "There's something I need to tell you, Buffy."_

"_Yeah?" Buffy replied, rolling her eyes. "And what would that be that you couldn't send an email or have Wesley or Fred or any of the others make a call like normal people do? We haven't seen each other in a year, Angel. What could possibly be so important that (a) you needed to come all the way up from L.A. to tell me, and (b) it couldn't wait for a slightly more convenient time? I mean, unless you're going to tell me that somehow you lost your soul again, and you're really Angelus just here to make my life miserable, why don't we cut to the chase, and I'll call Willow and then we can spar and fight and then I'll kick your ass like I always do right before she comes and re-ensouls you...again? So what is it, Angel? What's so important that you had to come all this way to tell me in person?"_

_Angel huffed and said, "You can't kick my ass, Buffy, any more than you ever could." His jaw hardened as the mention of his unsouled self sent a chill tingling down his spine. "And don't even talk about Angelus, okay? You know as well as I do that if that ever happened again, his first social call wouldn't be to see you, Buffy."_

"_Oh, really?" she asked, her voice nasal and plainly unimpressed. "Because he was pretty hung up on me the last time he got out." Pausing for a moment, she chuckled dismissively and said, "Hell, more like obsessed. So, yeah, Angel. I'm pretty damn sure Angelus would make a beeline—"_

"_Well," Angel said with a faint smirk. "You'd be wrong." Buffy saw his eyes narrow and took on a dreamy haze for a moment. "In fact, I'm pretty sure his first visit would be to a witch." His eyes darted to one side and brightened, then he glanced down at his feet as he blinked away a thought and brought his gaze back up to meet hers._

"_Maybe you're right," she mused. "Angelus is smart enough to know that his first order of business would be to make sure he wasn't gonna be bottled up again."_

"_Yeah," he croaked, hearing the desire rumble on the edge of his voice before he recovered and realized he needed to jerk the conversation back onto the rails. "That's right. But suffice it to say, your calls to Willow's cell phone would ring straight through to voicemail because the last goddamn thing Angelus would do is come see you first..." _

_He swallowed and a growl rattled low in his throat as he felt his native aggression crackle through him and he knew he had to bring himself back to a point of focus. He glanced down at his shoes again and stared at them for a few silent moments and then shrugged. _

"_Buffy," he said. "Look, I didn't come here to talk about that, or to argue with you, okay?" He nibbled the inside of his lip, then sighed. "I wanted you to hear it from me and not from someone else. Wolfram & Hart came to me and made me an offer to take over as CEO of their L.A. office." He paused, watching for some sort of flicker of a reaction in her green eyes, but saw none as she stared back at him coldly. "I said yes."_

_Buffy folded her arms across her chest and stared at him, her lower jaw shifting forward as she watched his brown eyes narrow then widen again, his forehead creasing as his brows flew up expectantly. She grunted quietly as she shook her head, letting a long, heavy silence hang in the air between them for several seconds as she wondered why he had bothered to come such a long way to deliver this news and how, exactly, he'd thought she would take it. She took a breath and asked herself how well he really did know her if he expected her response to be any different than it was. Maybe they weren't soul-mates after all, she started to think grimly. Maybe they never had been and never would be._

"_I know," she finally said, her voice devoid of any emotion as she verbalized what her look had just told him. However, deciding to add insult to injury, she shrugged and added, "So?"_

_His eyebrows knit low and hard over his dark brown eyes. "You know?" he choked, clearly taken aback by her knowledge. "What do you mean you know? How could you? No one knows but—"_

"_Come on, Angel," she snorted, punctuating her words with a huff as she rolled her eyes dismissively at him. "Don't be so naive. I've had people keeping an eye on Wolfram & Hart for ages. And I know a lot of people that make it their business to know what Evil Inc. is up to ASAP. So, yeah, I knew the day they made you the offer." She paused for a beat, her voice softening just a bit, as she shook her head slightly at him before she continued. "I have to admit, though, you surprised me there. I didn't think you'd actually take it. " She stopped again, and this time lifted her pale gaze to meet his dark, brooding stare as her voice once again hardened. "I figured you had a little bit more self-respect than that, but I guess the shallow-headed rottenness in L.A.'s finally gotten to you. It's too bad, really, but it's like you've always said...you've gotta do what you've gotta do, just like I do."_

_Angel sighed. "Look, Buffy," he said, his hand outstretched and his fingers splayed as he took a step towards her. "It's not as bad as it sounds. I promise. I haven't lost my soul or anything. I'm not being blackmailed. I just really think...me and the guys, that is—because Wes and Fred and Gunn and Lorne are all in on it too—we think that we might be able to make a difference, help more people, and it's just such an incredible opportunity that we had to—"_

_Buffy threw her hands up as she suddenly snapped at him. "No," she almost yelled at him, trying to get his attention. His eyes widened and eyebrows furrowed as he stared at her, taken aback by her response. Just as he opened his mouth to reply, she cut him off mid-breath and snapped at him again. "Listen, Angel, I don't want to hear your lame-ass, bullshit rationalizations, okay? __You__ sold out."_

"_You think __I__ sold out?" he hissed. "You've gotta be kidding me. You snuggled up to that little douche-bag Riley and his nasty little government-issue secret agent demon-hunter wannabes in The Initiative, only to find out how much of a bunch of slippery fucks they are when they tried to off you." He shook his head, then said, "Never mind the ultimate sell-out, right Buffy? Because we both know which one was the real doozie."_

"_Huh?" she snapped, her voice cracking on the edges, as her brow crinkled, and she shook her head. "What the hell are you talking about now?"_

"_You and Spike," Angel growled with a flip of his square chin in her direction. "You fell in with Spike. You think you know him, and what he's capable of, but the truth is you don't have a clue of what he can really do when he sets his mind to it." He sneered at her before he continued. "But I do," he said gravely. "I taught him everything he knows. I was there. I know exactly what kind of ruthless bastard he is. You know, too, all of it, but you still decided to fall in with him. So if you want to talk about fucking sell-outs, Buffy, I don't think you should exactly be throwing stones if you know what I mean."_

_Shaking her head again, Buffy sneered at him, "It's not the same thing, and we both know that, Angel. I mean, for God's sake, it's Wolfram & Hart that we're talking about. They're practically an eternal holding company for Hellmouth Inc. And now you're __voluntarily__ going to work for them? I don't care what type of bribes they offered you." _

_Angel winced, and his brown eyes flashed dark. His nostrils flared, both as a sign of his own indignation at the insult and also as he detected the sharp scent of human anger rolling off of her in even heavier waves that tickled his nose and made the tips of his ears burn bright red. _

"_The bottom line is that you sold your soul to the Devil, Angel," she hissed. "You did it all over again, which is pretty fucking ironic in the big, cosmic scheme of things. You sold them your hard-won soul, for what? Money? Cars? The lifestyle that you've always wanted but haven't had since the days when you were Angelus?"_

_The dark smolder in his eyes flashed again and he took a couple of steps closer to her, standing nearly toe to toe with her as he looked down at her. "How dare you," he snarled. "You think I'd do that? You actually think I'd start taking orders from the cosmic scumbags I've been fighting all these years just so I can sleep in fancy sheets and drive a Lamborghini? I can't believe you'd even say that kind of thing. You don't get it." He growled and shook his head. "You see everything as so damn black and white, Buffy. I guess that's what it means to be young and human. Thing is, though, reality isn't that black and white. Never has been, never will be. Live in the shadows as long as I have, and you'll realize the battle's won and lost on the edges, Buffy, in those little gray areas where you have to focus on the big picture." _

"_What a bunch of bullshit, Angel," she said. She stopped, shaking her head fervently again, and then said, "Look, I don't care why you did it. The bottom line is that you __did__ it. For whatever reason, you did it. And that means you can't be trusted anymore, Angel. We're not on the same side...if we ever were. So watch your back, okay? Because the next time I see you, I'm going to be on my guard, stake at the ready...and so should you, and there's not a single goddamn word you can say to tell me any different, alright?" _

"_What, is this some kind of 'my way or the highway kinda thing,' Buffy?" he asked. "Are you so damn insecure that it's not possible for you to give me a little credit for trying to use a little subtlety in fighting the same fight you've fighting all these years?" He shook his head and sighed. "Come on." _

_She turned and glanced at the clock above the stove. "Fine," she snorted. "Whatever. But, I assume that now that you've said what you wanted to say, we're done here, right? Because it's late, Angel, and like I said, I've got work in the morning. So, congrats on the new gig. But there's no need to send me the glossy press release, okay? Go and enjoy your company jet and your company car, and all your unlimited expense-account schmoozing with all the fiercest demonic scuzballs this side of Vegas. Have fun. Mazel tov." She grunted a laugh and added, "And, uhhh—don't bother calling, mmm'kay? Gypsy curse or not, you and Angelus may as well be locker buddies now, swapping spit in the shower, because Wolfram & Hart owns your soul now. It's almost like you don't even have one anymore."_

"_Buffy," Angel said, his eyes narrowed nearly to slits as he cocked his head to the side. "Come on. Look—I'm trying to do the right thing here, okay? I came here tonight, in good faith, to give you a head's up about this, alright? I came here, Buffy, because I wanted you to hear it from __me__, personally. And I did that out of respect." He shrugged, then said, "Obviously, I made a big mistake." He stood there for a few moments, shifting his weight from one hip to the other but didn't make a move towards the door. "I'd really hoped for better from you. After everything, you know."_

"_We're done here," she barked, her face reddening in response to the shift in his response and display of a more aggressive bearing towards her. "Do you hear me, Angel? Because, in case you don't get it, let me spell it out for you, nice and clear, huh? We're sure as hell we're not on the same side anymore. So, good luck, break a leg, and all that happy horseshit, but leave me the hell alone." _

"_You know what, Buffy?" he snapped. "You're a real fucking piece of work. You so need to grow up. You need to open your eyes. If you want to succeed as a Slayer and live a long life, you need to start seeing the world the way it really is. It's a big, bad world out there, and you need to learn how to distinguish the tolerable badness from the really serious shit. You're not in high school anymore, for fuck's sake."_

_She laughed darkly. "Oh, you sanctimonious asshole." She shook her head and then looked up at him to meet his direct gaze as she added, "You know what else, Angel? My invitation earlier? The one __I__ gave to __you__ out of respect? Well, you know what? Consider it rescinded. You're not welcome here anymore. Now get the fuck out of my apartment before I throw you out myself."_

Buffy blinked away the memory, recognizing that perhaps things had not been as good between her and Angel as she'd once recalled. A wave of guilt hit her the likes of which she hadn't felt in some time as she remembered how she'd come to regret the hurtful things she'd said to Angel that night after she'd calmed down. She'd come to realize that it wasn't so much a question of Angel selling out and betraying the cause, but rather something more subtle, something that had taken her years to figure out. What gnawed at her most about his acceptance of the Wolfram & Hart job was a niggling feeling that perhaps she never really knew him as well as she thought she did and, more grimly, though she never would admit it aloud (least of all to Spike), that if he actually gave in to temptation, not only would his soul be lost, but with it any hope that the two of them would ever find a way to be together.

Things had been better between them when she'd seen him right before the final battle that had closed the Hellmouth in Sunnydale, when they didn't have the luxury of doing anything else but putting everything but the impending apocalypse aside, but still it was clear that their most recent interactions had been...well, less than the idyllic ones she remembered. She hadn't seen him since then, and after leaving Sunnydale, she'd quietly hoped that the bad feelings between them would fade, but then she lost track of him completely, and the not knowing seemed to gnaw at her as much as the separation and the worry. Knowing that the only way to know for certain where she stood with him now—and to truly make certain he was alright—was to get the information of his current whereabouts from Brennan, Buffy knew she'd have to grin and bear whatever the forensic anthropologist wanted to say to her.

Buffy continued to look at Brennan, studying her with a sharp glance that bordered on a glare. The older woman didn't back down, and so in the interests of time—since it appeared that Brennan would be happy to continue their staring contest until the cows came home—Buffy broke the deadlock by speaking first.

"So, it seems you know a whole hell of a lot more about me than I know about you, Ms.—?" She let her voice trail off as she waited to see if the older woman would be civil and at least volunteer _something _to her that she could use in finding Angel in case Brennan didn't tell her.

Taking a breath, after another moment, she finally said, "You already know my name. It's Brennan," she said, "My name is Dr. Temperance Brennan."

Shaking her head, Buffy smiled in a fake way that infuriated Brennan. "But that's not what it's always been, has it? Because my spider-sense is tingling here bigtime. I think you've been around a lot longer than people think and that you're not quite what you seem. So, come on now. I sat. Throw me a bone and 'fess up. Who...and what...are you really?"

Pursing her lips, Brennan considered her point and then shrugged, "My name is and has always been Temperance Brennan. But, you're right. My academic credentials are a relatively...well, recent...addition. Many people—including Angel—know me by the more simplistic name that I've always gone by...Bren."

The Slayer blanched at the name, suddenly remembering how she had stood at Angel's bedside at Good Samaritan Hospital after he awoke from his coma and how he'd stared at her for a couple of seconds, blinked a few times, then smiled weakly and said to her in a raspy voice, _"Brennan...Bren...you're here. I knew you'd come." _

At the time, the syllables barely hung together and hadn't made any sense to her. It had all sounded like nonsense, the delirious rambles of a semi-comatose head-injury patient who stared back at her with puffy, dark-circled eyes that spoke of nothing more than overwhelming confusion. She'd heard his words and been sobered by them, not because she recognized the name, but rather because his breathy murmurings seemed to reveal how addled his brain was after surviving a three-story fall to the pavement.

But now, hearing that solitary syllable again after nearly four years, she felt her gut clench as the name itself made the bile rise in Buffy's throat. "Bren?"

Nodding, Brennan said, "Yes, to my friends and closer intimates...although to the likes of you, it's still Dr. Brennan, Miss Summers."

This time, Buffy did role her green eyes at Brennan as she said, "Dr. Brennan. Right got it. And while I get the whole 'know your partner thing' as far as Agent Booth goes...you know about Angel...how?"

This time it was Brennan who legitimately smiled as she answered, "I know a lot more about him than you probably think." She paused for a beat and then added for emphasis, "A _lot _more, actually. Far too much to tell in one afternoon sitting in as uncomfortable a chair as this considering the fact that I'm currently gestating a fetus."

"Uh huh," Buffy said as she considered the strange way the woman talked. "Right. Well, I'm sure you'll be a great mother, seeing as how warm, fuzzy, and downright cute and cuddly you are." Shaking her head with a snort, she said, "So, anyway, if you can't give me a straight answer about Angel, then how about this? You said that if you wanted me dead—which might or might not be true, by the way, but we'll set that one aside for a minute so we don't end up quibbling over the picky details—I'd already have croaked. And since I haven't, I guess that means you _don't _want to kill me—"

Unable to help herself, Brennan muttered under her breath, "I wouldn't go _that _far."

Arching an eyebrow, even though Buffy hadn't heard the specific wording of what Brennan had muttered, she stared at her start on as she said, "Pardon?"

Waving her off dismissively, Brennan said, "Nothing. You were saying?"

Buffy again stared at her, shrugged, and then continued. "Like I was saying, I guess you think if you wanted me dead, and since I'm not dead now, then that means you don't want to kill me. So since that's a plus in my book, and you've already owned up to knowing something about Angel, how about we skip to the part where you tell me what you want so you'll tell me what it is you know, hmm, Dr. Brennan? What do you want from me...besides being able to talk, that is?"

Lifting the cup of tea that Terry had brought over to her, Brennan took a long, slow sip and then set the still slightly steaming paper cup back down on the table in front of her. She then threaded her fingers together as she rested her chin on top of her hands before she smacked her lips together in a marked way and only _then _finally answered her question.

"You really want to know what _I _want, Miss Summers?" Brennan asked. "Do you?"

Buffy's brow crinkled before she nodded. "Uhh, yeah," she said. "That's sorta why I asked the question."

Nodding, Brennan said, "Fine. Then, here it is, although I can assure you that you won't like it one bit."

Shrugging, Buffy said, "Why don't you let me be the judge of that?"

"What I really want," Brennan began, " is for you to turn around, leave D.C., go home to wherever you came from, and never come back...all in as timely a manner as possible."

This time it was Buffy who chuckled. "You're right," she snorted. "I don't like that."

Brennan tilted her head and replied, "Told you."

"Yes," Buffy responded. "You did. Now, I have a question for you, _Dr. _Brennan." She purposely put emphasis on her title that Brennan knew she was doing to goad her. "Why don't you tell me why I should do _any _of that?"

Reaching for her cup of tea again, Brennan paused in mid-air and gave Buffy a sly smile, then answered, "Because, I'm not really sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news for you, but the simple fact of the matter is that Angel doesn't eat cookies anymore, so he doesn't need to wait for your metaphorical cookie dough to be finished baking, at which moment it would signal that magically vomit-inducing moment when the grey storm clouds will part, the sun will come out, rainbows will shine, and birds will sing, thus heralding your edenic time to be together."

The moment Buffy heard the word 'cookie' fall from Brennan's lips, she felt a dark, sinking sensation in her gut and her face blanched. Buffy had been sure the snarky scientist was bluffing about her knowledge of Angel, but when she mentioned the conversation Buffy had with Angel the day the Hellmouth closed in Sunnydale, she knew that she'd been wrong.

"_I'm cookie dough," _she'd told him. _"I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I'm gonna turn out to be. I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day, I turn around and realize I'm ready. I'm cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat or enjoy warm, delicious, cookie me, then that's fine. That'll be then. When I'm done." _ Her eyes swiveled away for a fleeting second as she tried to gather herself despite the plain truth of the fact that not only did this woman know Angel, but she knew about _her _and their past together, a fact which shook Buffy to the core.

Unable to help but be pleased with the look she'd received at her words thus far, Brennan continued, feeling a slight warm gleefulness spread throughout her body. "The fact is, Miss Summers," she continued, "that Angel doesn't eat cookies anymore because he developed a rather insatiable taste for pie. So, you need to be aware of that fact, accept that he prefers eating a rather obscene amount of such baked confections, consisting of various cooked fruit fillings, and move on...for both his sake and yours."

Folding her hands, Buffy leaned forward a bit and gave Brennan a sly smile as she said, "He told you about that, huh?" Then, feeling a bit vulnerable and exposed, she took a breath and decided to regain some of the ground she'd felt she'd lost. "I'm going to guess you're a regular in the bakery department of Safeway," she said with a sneer, "because you sure as hell don't strike me as the pie-baking type."

Brennan stared at the Slayer, shrugged her shoulders, and then smirked. "Yes, well, I believe we've already established how accurate your intuition is, Miss Summers, as in...it isn't. At all. About me or Angel or anything else, apparently. But, to answer your former question, yes. He told me about that because that's what equals in a committed, monogamous romantic relationship do. They're honest and open with one another. So, there's not much he hasn't told me," Brennan said, brushing off the insult with a slight shrug of her shoulder. She stopped and then said, "So, now the only question that remains is, why are you still here, Miss Summers?"

Buffy looked at Brennan intently for a minute and then said, "If Angel really tells you as much as you say he does, and you know so much about me, then why don't you tell me?"

Taking a deep breath, Brennan gave Buffy a critical look, the same one that she often gave a set of remains as she was assessing them. She then tilted her head and answered, "I think you're still here because you're stubborn. To be quite blunt, Miss Summers, you're a very stubborn and a very arrogant person—which, coming from someone like me, is saying something, believe you me—but, unlike me, you have very little to back up the level of tenacity and arrogance to which you've come to possess in your young life."

"Well, gee," Buffy said with a sarcastic snicker. "You really _do _know me. So I guess there's no point in going to see a psychic to get a Tarot spread because you read me like an open book. Wow." She punctuated her sarcasm with another roll of her green eyes.

"I think you're also here," Brennan continued. "Because you don't like being told, in not so many words, to leave him alone, when that imperative so obviously directly conflicts with the reason you think you came to D.C. even if, in reality, the true reason you came here differs from that original rationalization on your part."

Buffy's green eyes flashed for a minute, as she looked down at her feet and muttered something that Brennan couldn't make out. She then swiveled her head back up to face the older woman straight on as she finally said, "You know, for someone who likes to play up the fact they're so blunt, you sure like chewing the other person's face off with the SAT vocab, don't you?"

Brennan arched an eyebrow and then said, "I don't know what that means."

"Yeah," Buffy suddenly laughed sardonically. "I'm sure you don't." She then paused for a beat and said, "I only came to D.C. for one reason, Dr. Brennan. Angel's been missing for five years. His family and friends are worried about him, and we wanted some answers."

Shaking her head, Brennan said simply, "No, that's not it."

A small look of confusion crossed Buffy's face. "Oh, it's not?"

"No," Brennan repeated. "It's not. As I said, that's the reason you've built up in your head to rationalize your trip here. But, no, it's not the real reason you came here."

"Okay," Buffy said, shaking her head as if she couldn't quite believe why she was playing along with Brennan's quackery beyond the fact that she was the door to getting to Angel. "I'll bite again. I'm just a glutton for punishment like that, I guess. So tell me, Nostradamus, what's the real reason I'm here, if I'm not here to find my friend?"

"Nostradamus is quite an interesting figure, I'll admit," Brennan said with a smirk. "But while his writings are interesting, I find them tedious and altogether a bit vague. Plus, as an apothecary, he reminds me far too much of my father." She considered pointing out that the legendary seer was born just six years before her father, Max, but she was relishing being in a position of superior knowledging, meting out information to the Slayer in very deliberate dribbles, and therefore thought better of it. Straightening her back, Brennan's previously relaxed body language suddenly shifted in a marked way as her delicate square jaw suddenly hardened, and her pale blue eyes flashed brighter even as they narrowed, transfixing the young Slayer with her gaze. For her part, Buffy's face further paled a couple of shades as her eyes met Brennan's and she felt a swirl in her gut that told her that something had changed in the game between them.

Her blue eyes darkening somewhat as they narrowed on the Slayer's form, Brennan's hard edge voice finally answered, "I think that you've finally gotten bored. After all these years, I think, you've gotten bored with whatever and whoever you use to fill your days. And, quite unluckily for Angel, that timing coincided with something, at some point, reminding you of him. So, your interest re-piqued, once you realized how long it's been awhile since you yanked his metaphorical chain, you decided that you needed to run as hard and as fast at him as you could. You wanted to make certain that you still have your harpy claws stuck as deep into him as you once did so you could continue stringing him along like you have since he took a wrong turn and ended up in Sunnydale fifteen years ago."

Hearing her relationship with Angel so thoroughly derided in such a short rant, Buffy shifted in her seat and felt her legs tense as her fingers curled into fists in her lap. Feeling her body's response as a betrayal, she briefly closed her eyes then opened them again and forcing a smirk. "Right," Buffy laughed. "Yup. I admit it. You got me." She lifted her hands and waved them. "I confess. You're just too good. How'd you ever figure it out that it's always been my sole ambition in life to lead Angel on?"

"Well, _that's _surprising," Brennan said as she sat back in the uncomfortable plastic coated chair of the outdoor table where they were sitting. "At least you're being honest about it. I must admit, I didn't expect you to be so forthright."

Buffy blinked at Brennan. "You think I'm being serious?"

"Aren't you?" Brennan retorted, giving the Slayer a critical glare.

"Yeah," Buffy replied, as she shot Brennan another strange look. "Huh. I admit it. My great skill in life is to enthrall Angel just so that I can, what?" She stopped, snapped her fingers, and then tilted her head at the forensic anthropologist. "Wait, what's my motivation again?"

"I don't know, Miss Summers," Brennan answered. "I've never known spoiled, selfish, silly little girls like you to ever have enough forethought that even approaches a type of motivation. You're far too reactive."

"You think I'm a spoiled little girl?" the Slayer huffed with disdain. "Wow. You _really _think you're all that and a bag of chips, don't you, lady?" She shot Brennan another look, then shook her head and said, "But you don't know anything about me. You don't know what I've been through in my life, or the challenges I've had to overcome, or—"

"Whatever," Brennan spat dismissively before dialing back her tone and continuing thoughtfully. "Of course, if we were going to—purely for speculation's sake, let's say—give you the benefit of the doubt and assign a proper motivation, I would say first it comes from your mindset."

Buffy's green eyes widened with curiosity as she wondered how much Brennan really knew about her and she growled, "And what do _you _know about any mindset I might have, Dr. Brennan?"

Laughing lightly again, Brennan said, "Oh, I know your type, Miss Summers. I know that you're the type of woman who comes across a good man and tries her damndest to ruin him. You cling far too much because you have to smother a real man's masculinity to make yourself feel better. You're so needy and insecure that you can't think for yourself. You hook a good man like Angel, and then you follow his lead for as long as it's convenient for you. His life is your life. You make his battles and struggles, and his triumphs, yours...at least as long as it's convenient for you. Then, when you're done playing the role of the doting and utterly loving partner and girlfriend, you pick an argument and try to make him feel guilty for merely being the person he's always been even if you couldn't change him into something else that you wanted...no matter how hard you tried to do so. You create melodrama for the mere sake of melodrama, Miss Summers. Simply put, you aren't content unless you're front and center so you can be the focus of everyone's attention so you do whatever you have to do to achieve that aim, even if it means hurting the person you once claimed to love."

"I don't have a clue what you're talking about," the Slayer hissed. "But I know you've got a lot of gall to think you can—"

Shaking her head, Brennan snapped, "Like hell you don't." Her eyes, had anyone noticed, had darkened in the time she'd been talking to the Slayer, but even as they darkened, a staticky splice of light also flashed in her irises as she forced herself to take another breath before she continued. "But fine, Miss Summers. We'll play it your way. If you don't like that motivation, courtesy of my very brief character study of your simplistic personality, then how about this one—betrayal?" Brennan narrowed her eyes as she watched Buffy's pale cheeks flush in anger. "That's always a good one, isn't it? Something like that, perhaps? How do you like that? I think it works here for you, don't you?"

The mocking look suddenly left Buffy's face as her face hardened as she shot Brennan a stony, piercing stare. Although she kept her seat, she felt every muscle in her slightly-built frame draw tight as a cocked crossbow.

_You know? _she said to herself. _Fuck this. I'm done being nice. This bitch is out of control. Enough is enough. It's time for me to take my gloves off._

Her jaw tightened and her voice sharpened as she said, "I've _never _betrayed Angel."

Maintaining her calm in the wake of Buffy's clear anger, in marked contrast to the younger blonde woman, Brennan lifted her cup of tea to her mouth and paused for a few seconds before raising it completely to her lips. She took a small sip, then said, "Then how would you describe saving him, watching him being re-ensouled, kissing him, and then metaphorically stabbing him in the back by sending him to hell, all the while watching him as you did it and knowing that he didn't even have a clue what was happening to him until it was too late because he was too busy concentrating on you telling him that you loved him?"

Buffy's breath caught in her throat for a few moments as the significance of Brennan's words sank in, and it was during that time that she realized that the scientist could not have found out about such events unless Angel had told her about them. To hear Brennan characterize such events the way she did, and to judge Buffy's actions the way she did, left the Slayer with a hard lump in her throat and unable to shake the gut-twisting possibility that Brennan's judgment reflected Angel's own recounting of the story.

"Well," she croaked. "I call that doing what I had to do to save the world." Wincing slightly as she tried to hush the nagging voice of doubt in the back of her mind, she snapped, "That's what I call that."

Looking at her with a more than slight look of disgust on her face, Brennan shook her head, clearly unimpressed. "Well, you can call it whatever you want," Brennan told her with a slight shrug. "But, the rest of us humans on planet Earth would call what you did betrayal, Miss Summers. And not just any betrayal, but a betrayal of the worst kind because _he trusted you_."

Standing up, Buffy shook her head. "Look, I don't know what version of events Angel told you about things, but the fact of the matter was, I didn't have any choice. I had to do what I did. I—"

Arching an eye, Brennan cut her off sharply as she asked, "Which time?"

"What?" Buffy scoffed at her. "What do you mean 'which time'?"

"I mean," Brennan said, standing up and matching Buffy's aggressive stance with one of her own before she continued speaking. "Which time are you talking about, Miss Summers? Which betrayal? Are you talking about the one where you stood in front of Angel, knew he'd gotten his soul back, kissed him, and told him you loved him even as you pushed him into a hell dimension where he'd spend a century or more in constant agony? Or, how about the one where you turned your back on him when you had that problem with the psychopathic Slayer running around L.A. because you didn't trust him to do the right thing? Or, what's probably in my top five list of favorites, how about when you started sleeping with his grandchilde behind his back?"

Buffy's eyes narrowed as her lip curled back in anger. "His grandchilde?" she hissed. "How do you—?" The fury that was simmering in her chest bubbled up and frothed with surprise and confusion as she sucked in a sharp breath. "How in the hell do you even know who Spike is?" she asked. "And as far as what I did or didn't do with him, that's none of your business, so you can just fuck off, okay? You don't have a fucking clue what my life is like, lady. I did what I had to do because as Slayer, I was the only one who could do it, so I could really give a rat's ass what your opinion is about me or my sex life."

For a moment, Brennan fondly remembered the dandified young vampire who'd sent her flowers and chocolates day after day, in the hopes that she would remove the magically-implanted horn that she'd caused to sprout from his forehead after he'd made a lewd remark about Angelus hanging off her teats like an unweaned puppy. She then grunted out a quiet chuckle as she relished in her knowledge of both of the ensouled vampires with whom Buffy had at one point or the other been infatuated in her young life.

"You're right," Brennan smirked. "We _are _getting off-topic. So let's stay focused on the topic at hand—Angel. The simple matter of fact, Miss Summers, is that you've betrayed Angel one too many times." The forensic anthropologist stopped, shook her head, and then muttered, more to herself than to Buffy, even though the younger woman could hear her, "You know what? The one thing that's always bothered me about you, the one thing I've never understood is how Angel could ever have a moment of perfect happiness with you. I never understood how or why it happened. But, it obviously did. I can't deny that since you let Angelus loose. But, now that I've actually met you, I think I finally get it now. I finally think I know that the reason he had that moment with you is because by being with you, he could forget, even for just the most brief of instances, who and what he was and what he's done that's worth forgetting over the last two and a half centuries. To be free of that burden, when he was with you, _that _was why he was truly happy."

"You know what, lady?" Buffy cocked her head and leveled a rigid stare at Brennan. "You don't know anything about me or about what happened between Angel and me," she told her. "Then or now. Who in the hell do you think you are, anyway? You think you know all this shit about me, and you know what? Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. You think you know what's going on inside his heart, or mine? You're wrong. But, you know what? None of that matters. All that matters is that I came here because no one, not a single person, has seen or heard from Angel in over _five _years."

Clearly unimpressed, Brennan answered, "So?"

Her eyes widening, Buffy quickly responded, "So? What do you mean 'so'? What did you do...grow up on some desert island like Tarzan or Gilligan something? Maybe you never had a normal life with normal family and friends, but most of the rest of us do, and so did Angel. And when normal people like he and I disappear, the people who love us worry, you know? His family? His friends? He just disappeared from their lives, just like that." She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "And I don't believe for one minute he's gone off the grid for that long with absolutely no contact with anyone if he had any choice in the matter. He just _wouldn't _do something like that by choice, of his own free will. I know Angel, and he just wouldn't."

The color drained from Brennan's face as a very painful image suddenly flashed in her mind.

_Taking a deep breath, she said, "I made a deal—"_

_"With whom?" he interrupted. "Tell me, dammit! Quit playing fucking games and tell me."_

_Shaking her head, she said, "It doesn't matter. What does matter is that...you're going to have a new life. A new life...a new identity...a new name and a new job...a new family. Everything..." She felt the familiar pain in her belly flair at the look he shot her. Still, her voice cracking, she finished, "You're finally going to have everything that you've always wanted, everything that will make you happy. And, they won't be able to find you. You'll be safe, and you'll...you'll be happy."_

_He considered her words, paling as he finally realized the magnitude of what she'd done. "Oh, God," he muttered. "Fuck. So...this...this is what it feels like?"_

_Confusion clouded Brennan's face as she said, "What what feels like?"_

Pushing the memory away, Brennan felt her hatred for the Slayer flare even more intensely since she'd made her remember what had been one of the most painful days in her entire five centuries of life. She swallowed in what she hoped was a subtle manner, grabbed her tea cup from the table, and took a step away from the Slayer in the direction of a nearby trashcan, pausing as she felt the younger woman's eyes boring into her. Brennan met her gaze and then sighed as they resumed their prior staring contest.

"He's fine," Brennan finally told her after a minute as Buffy continued to stare at her. "He's safe, he's happy, and he's finally got the type of life he's always _deserved_...always _wanted _to have."

"Yeah, well," Buffy laughed. "I hope you don't hold it against me if I don't take your word for it, but until I see him with my own two eyes and he tells me that himself, I'm not buying whatever bullshit you're peddling, there, lady. So, ummm, yeah. Now, I think I've shown a hell of a lot of patience and self control while you've ranted and thrown some pretty low fucking blows even though you know squat about me. So why don't you pay up now, and tell me where I can find Angel. Where is he? I want to see him."

"That won't be happening," Brennan replied sharply. "Not if I have anything to say about it."

Buffy's body stiffened as she dug her feet into the hard cement of the paved area in front of the coffee cart. "I'm not leaving here until I've checked on him," she said defiantly. "So deal with it."

Brennan's brow furrowed as she shook her head, a look of distaste growing more and more intense on her face as she said, "God, your sense of self-entitlement knows no bounds, does it? How obnoxious and arrogant you are."

"You think I'm obnoxious just because I care about Angel?" Buffy asked.

"I think that for a woman who hasn't seen him in five years—or longer, really, if we're counting the last time you really saw him and interacted with him, which was way before L.A. got sent to hell by the Senior Partners, since you turned your back on him when he took over that branch of Wolfram and Hart because you didn't trust him to do the right thing as he was trying to work them—then, yes, I'd say you're arrogant and obnoxious if you think that's how you really treat someone whom you say you love. You're arrogant, obnoxious and, frankly, _foolish_, to assume that Angel needs protecting, and if he did, that you'd be the only one worthy of taking care of him in that way. So, yes, Miss Summers, I do. I think you're arrogant, obnoxious, crass, crude, and annoying to say the least."

Brennan stopped, shook her head as her jaw tightened, then said, "No one's ever really called you on your bullshit, have they, Miss Summers? You've never been told that you don't have the extraordinary intelligence, experience, skill set, or self-worth to back up how important and significant you think you are. But, you know what, Miss Summers? I know _exactly_ who and what you are, and I'm quite happy to probably be the very first person in your entire life to tell you that you aren't nearly as good as you think you are. That being said, let me also put this in as plain a set of terms as possible: he doesn't want you. Go away. Now. Before you really make me tell you something that will shatter that delicate, fragile ego of yours. Go now."

Buffy's pale skin blushed again as she listened to Brennan's words. She then suddenly raised her right hand and said, "Do you know what this is?"

Brennan looked at the Slayer's hand and then saw a dainty gold Claddagh ring shining on the woman's finger. With an unimpressed shrug, she answered, "A ring?"

"Yes, it's a ring," Buffy snapped. "A ring that _Angel _gave me." Brennan didn't blink, but silently nibbled on the inside of her lower lip as she watched the gold metal glint in the afternoon sun, her mind racing, mentally thumbing through a dozen different scenarios under which Angel would 've given such a ring to the Slayer, and all of them turned her stomach the way she hadn't felt since her morning sickness faded. She felt her chest tighten as she wanted to rip that ring off the Slayer's hand—and her finger with it, if she had to—and throw it in the Reflecting Pool behind her.

"He gave it to me because he loves me," Buffy said. "And because we belong to one another, and he knows that what we have is special. And he knows who I am and just what I'm worth. So you can take your pompous bullshit opinions and go—"

"_Had,"_ Brennan interrupted her, even as her heart raced as she blinked at the ring. "_Had_, as in past tense, Miss Summers. As in not anymore. A subtle, but intensely important significant point of grammar that needs to be made "

Laughing in a derisive manner, Buffy said, "Spare me the Grammar 101 lessons, Dr. Brennan. I passed the verbal part of the SAT just fine, thanks. And, as for your little mind games, you can think that if it makes you feel better at night," Buffy shrugged. "But I know the truth. The truth of him and me. What we had, and what we have. It's forever."

"You of all people should be the last goddamn person to talk about playing mindgames, Slayer" Brennan said wryly. "If there were actually a reigning Queen of Mindgames, you'd be celebrating your metaphorical jubilee." Reflecting on her own words for a couple of seconds as she remembered the look on Angel's face the night he arrived on her doorstep after Buffy had condemned his decision to accept the offer from Wolfram & Hart, which rejection had sent him reeling into a brooding spiral of anger and self-doubt. Feeling her teeth clench at the memory, she glared at Buffy as her limbs twitched with an agitated energy. As she stared into the Slayer's eyes, Brennan remembered the look on Angel's face that night.

_He stared at her with expectation and gravity in his deep brown eyes, and as he looked at Brennan, it seemed to her that he appeared to be bracing himself for some type of pain inducing response. As Angel sat there, his eyebrows aloft, his brow deeply creased in tense expectation. and his mouth gaping open as he readied himself for what he assumed would be her negative response, Brennan became more and more confused by his body language_.

Blinking away the obtrusive memory, a sudden flash of anger seized Brennan as she spun on her foot and took a menacing step towards Buffy. "Who in the hell do you think you are?" she asked.

"Excuse me?" Buffy retorted, quickly leaning in to match Brennan's aggressive posture. "I know who and what _I _am, Dr. Brennan, especially to Angel. I'm a Slayer. I've saved the world from evil scum like you more times that I can count."

Chuckling, Brennan snarked, "You must not be able to count very high then." She paused and then added, "You've dusted a few vamps, closed a couple hellmouths, averted an apocalypse or two with a bunch of outside help, and you think you know what real evil is, Miss Summers?" Brennan blew a raspberry and shook her head, clearly unimpressed by Buffy's defense of her actions. "The truth is, Miss Summers, you know _nothing_, not even about yourself—not really. So you've seen and done a few things, pulled off a few more things by accident, and you think you're someone special. Well, you know what? Come and talk to me when you've been slaying for a hundred and fifteen years. Then we'll see if you're such the special and talented individual whom you claim to be."

"You know, you're real good at dodging questions," Buffy told her. "So are you gonna tell me who you are or what? Because, as for Angel, the real question, I think, isn't who I am to Angel like I said, it's who in the hell do you think _you _are? So how about we mix things up, Dr. Brennan and you give it to me straight just once, huh?"

"I think I'm the person who's loved him since before your grandmother was a glimmer in somebody's eye," Brennan responded instantly. "I've spent the length of your lifetime and longer picking up the pieces when Angel's been broken by whatever latest true love or big dream-come-true/_raison d'etre_ he thinks he found. Each time, Angel's hopeless romanticism led him down a path that ended again and again in disappointment. And I've been there every time to put him back together. I've seen it happen many times before you were born, Slayer, but you know what? I'm not doing it anymore, and neither is he because we don't have to do it anymore. You may be a bit slow on the uptake, but the plain fact of the matter is, Angel has finally settled down after all these years, found himself and his place in this world, and he's very, very happy. And, he's done that without you, by the way, though it really goes without saying. So, here's my advice: forget whatever you think you saw that brought you here. If Angel wants to see you, he will. He'll find you." Brennan leveled a hard stare at the blonde slayer. "Until then, if and when that happens, leave him be," she told her. "Go home and forget about Angel because I can assure you, he's long ago forgotten about you."

"No," Buffy said stubbornly crossing her arms. "That's not happening. Not until I see for myself that he's okay."

"Oh, really?" Brennan laughed incredulously. "Since when did you ever give a fuck about his well-being? I mean, really? Tell me. Why did you come here, Miss Summers? Did you expect him to just drop everything and come running as soon as you crooked your little finger for what? Some type of would-be romantic reunion? Well, I'm sorry to have to disappoint you, but it doesn't work that way."

"Okie dokie," Buffy snapped, shifting her weight from one hip to the other. "I've had just about enough of you telling me about my relationship with Angel."

"I know that you were never good enough for him," Brennan said, shaking her head as her own cheeks reddened. "Never."

"Who are you to tell me that?" Buffy scoffed. "Because, frankly, despite what you think you know or don't know about him, the simple truth is you don't know squat—"

"Oh," Brennan purred. "I know a hell of lot more than squat. I know more about Angel than you even knew was possible to know. I know about all the things that make him the warrior that he is—things you know nothing about—and when the fighting's done, all the things he likes to relax."

Letting the last comment hang in the air between them, the witch felt a raw tingling against her skin and watched with a certain satisfaction as Buffy's eyes blinked and her cheeks twitched faintly while the full implication of Brennan's words sank in.

"I know Angel better than any person on this earth," Brennan said. "Past, present, and future. So whatever pittances of affection you think he shared with you during the course of your little dalliance back in Sunnydale frankly pales in comparison to the things he and I have shared since the night we met nearly a century before your parents were even born. You know _nothing _about him. I know every inch of him, heart, mind, _and _body—both with and without a soul. I know what he wants and what he needs, and what drives him out of his skin—and I know as sure as the sun will set tonight that Angel doesn't need you. The truth is, he _never _did. And now that he's realized that, not only does he _not _need _you_, but he doesn't _want _you either..." She narrowed her eyes and drew her gaze up and down Buffy's slender body, shaking her head with a quiet snort. "No, he doesn't need you, or want you, and he definitely doesn't require you to watch over him or to check in on him...and if he ever did need someone to do that, it sure as hell wouldn't be you. So I suggest that you deal with that fact that Angel's been doing just fine without you, Slayer. The simple truth is, if Angel needs anyone to take care of him, and his needs, that person is _me_. It sure the fuck isn't you...never was and _never will be._"

Buffy's mouth formed a hard, firm line as she chewed the inside of her lip. "You're a real trip," she said. "Angel loves me. He loves me, and he wants me, the same way he always has. That's what you scientific types call a constant, I believe. I don't know who the fuck you think you are, but what Angel and I have is forever. He's never stopped loving me, and he's never stopped wanting me. Now, if won't tell me where he is, then fine. We're done here. So kindly get the hell out of my way, and I'll find him myself." She paused, then said with a sneer, "Dr. Brennan..." Glancing up at the afternoon sun, she added, "You know, if I really wanted to, by sundown I'll have made damn sure that he'd be moaning my name and mine alone because it'll be the only thing he remembers by the time I'm done with him."

Brennan smirked and shook her head. "You have a lot to learn about Angel if it takes you that long," she said tersely.

The blush in Buffy's cheeks paled at hearing the deadpan tone of Brennan's reply. Nothing, it seemed, intimidated this strange woman. "Who are you anyway to think you can lord your knowledge of Angel over me like you're some big and scary gatekeeper?" she asked.

"Hardly," Brennan chuckled as she shook her head. She then again shot Buffy a critical look as she said, "You know, I once had a lady's maid when I lived in London that reminds me quite a lot of you now that I think about it. She was twenty-three, and her name was Jessica. She came from a nameless gentry family. She was slightly more intelligent than the average spinsters who couldn't be married off because they never had that big enough a dowry that could be used to coax some poor schmuck into wanting to marry them. That was why I hired her at first, because she wasn't a complete and total idiot. She possessed a bit of schooling, but not much...just enough to make her dangerous. That was how she got the idea to apply for a position with me. She thought that if she surrounded herself with betters that she, in turn, would improve. But, you know what, Miss Summers? Jessica was wrong in making that assumption. She was never, ever going to succeed in her goal because inherently she wasn't of the quality to be able to rise to the levels to which she aspired to climb. She was a poser, a liar, a cheat, and a thief who needed to be put in her place. And, when she was caught in the act, I was only too happy to be the one who was able to do that for her and make her aware of the fact that there are _always _consequences for ones actions that one must always eventually face. It's just a question of when, where, and how."

Buffy smirked as she said, "Great story, Dr. Brennan. Thanks for that NPR story-telling moment. Now, why don't you answer my damn question? What makes _you _so special that you think you have any say about what happens in Angel's life in any way, shape, or form?"

Unable to help herself, Brennan suddenly lifted her left hand. The sapphire in her ring sparkled in the afternoon light as she said, "That would be this."

"What's that?" Buffy asked with a wary glance at Brennan's hand. She stared at the silver ring, which appeared to be of a Celtic knotwork design like she'd seen in one of Giles' old books. The inky blue of the sapphire flashed in the sun and reminded her of the wearer's eyes, which flashed a deeper, darker blue than their pale color would at first seem capable of. After a couple of seconds, another thought flickered in Buffy's mind—that of a griffon, its neck plumage drawn with the same sort of knot-like curls, tattooed onto the smooth olive skin of Angel's right shoulder—and she felt the bile rise in her throat as it became apparent that, for all her bluster, the angry woman before her knew Angel well, and had for a very, very long time. _Why didn't he ever tell me about her? _Buffy wondered, a frown pouting her lips before she could catch herself and contain her response. _Damn it._

"That would be the ring that Angel gave to _me_, Miss Summers," Brennan told her.

"Right," Buffy snickered. "And, why would _he _give _you _a ring like that?"

"Because," Brennan snarled back. "That's what's customary when a man marries a woman."

The revelation hung in the air like a heavy smoke, acrid and bitter as if the words themselves could choke the hearer's very breath.

Buffy's eyes widened, and her stomach sank. The revelation made her want to throw up, and if she'd eaten more than a half of an English muffin with her yogurt that morning, she was sure she would have. She felt a dark, heavy feeling wash over her, wrapping around her and weighing down on her from above. _This can't be, _she told herself. _There's just no freakin' way. Not Angel, and not her. No...just. He wouldn't do that. After everything we've been through. He wouldn't do something like that. Not to me. She's...she's got to be lying for some reason. I don't know why, but nothing else makes sense because Angel __wouldn't__ do that to me. _She watched the snarl on Brennan's lips soften into a smirk and her gaze fell to rest momentarily on the scientist's round pregnant belly before coming up again to meet her eyes. "Wait, you're telling me that you and Angel...you...I mean, you expect me to believe that Angel would get married...at all, but if he ever did, that he'd marry someone...well, someone like you?"

She blinked at Brennan and then laughed in a way that made Brennan consider wanting to tear the younger woman's throat out in an act of violence the likes of which she hadn't engaged in in well over a century.

"Lemme guess," Buffy said. "The next thing you'll be telling me is that he goes around leaving your favorite flowers and pictures of you that he drew himself, right?" She didn't wait for Brennan to respond. Instead, she slapped her thigh and began to laugh before she pointed at Brennan.

"You know what?" she snickered as she smiled at Brennan. "That's a good one. You almost had me going there. But, you made one little mistake. For a joke like that to work—even if it's a really bad joke, by the way—you need to be a bit more realistic in your set-up. I mean, sure. It's a bit of a stretch for me to think that the reason why Angel's been MIA for five years is because he's gotten himself hooked up as the happy home man and finally settled down with a wife, two-point-three kids, a Golden Retriever, and an SUV he uses to commute back and forth from the 'burbs. But, sure, shit happens. I might buy that if only you hadn't cast yourself as his Mrs."

The Slayer closed her eyes and shook her head, grunted out another laugh before she continued. "See, that's where you made your mistake, Dr. Brennan," she said. "Because I'm sorry, but the idea of you and Angel ever playing the happy homemakers just isn't buyable. It isn't real. I mean, Angel? A guy like _him _ever loving a girl like _you?_ Nope. No way. The suspension of disbelief's just too great. I mean, a girl like _me? _Well, yeah, sure. That makes sense. He and I make sense. All you have to do is look at us, and anyone could tell that the two of us match, we fit each other. But, you two? Nope. It just doesn't compute. It would never work. You don't match. You don't fit. You would never work together. Besides all that, he could never willingly want to be with a woman like you. You're not his type. Too tall, too...well..."

Buffy's lips curled into a crooked smile as she cocked her head to the side and gave Brennan's rounded belly and full bosom a long, exaggeratedly languid look.

"Much too curvy for his tastes...and..." Her eyes shot up and met Brennan's. "And definitely a bit too old. But it just doesn't make sense, a cold control-freak like you ever being able to satisfy a passionate guy like him." She paused, smirked, then said, "I mean, obviously a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile, but I seriously doubt you even like sex. Are you even capable of letting go for more than five seconds, long enough to let yourself get off, never mind get a guy off, to say nothing of a guy like _him_?" She let the comment hang in the air for several long seconds. "Do you even make any noise, or do you just lay there?" She paused, shook her head and then added with a sly grin, "No, I just don't see it. I just—no way I see him tucking in with an ice queen like you."

Buffy snorted dismissively as if to punctuate her own words. She took another long, appraising look at Brennan. "See, I just don't see it, you with a guy like him, let alone getting a guy like that to settle down and make any type of life with you, let alone love you. I mean, women like you, Dr. Brennan? I see it all the time. You're sad, frustrated, warped woman who no one could ever love. You aren't worth it. So, yeah, Angel could never say 'I love you' to a woman like you and mean it, let alone any of the other stuff that comes with the gold bands and baby carriage." She hesitated for a moment and then snickered. "Congrats, by the way, on getting yourself knocked up by some nameless schmo after a tequila-fueled night of fucking that I'm sure was so epically awesome that you couldn't help but block it out thanks to your drunken haze." She narrowed her eyes and tightened her hand into a fist as if around an imaginary dagger she was twisting in Brennan's gut. "I suppose it's easier than going through the paperwork at a sperm bank, though, huh? And cheaper, right? Just five or six shots of whatever shitty wells tequila some shithole of a bar is serving up, huh? It's even better on ladies nights with the two-for-one. All the guys come in trolling for a good lay, and there you go. Would-be baby daddies to father your nameless little bastard everywhere, right?" She broke off eye contact with Brennan, shaking her head as she chuckled at her own humor. "But, anyway, you need to work on your act, okay? Because next time, if you really want someone to fall for your little fictional schtick, maybe you should try—"

It happened in a split second.

One minute Buffy was standing next to Brennan, laughing at her in pure mockery while the latter clenched her fists by her sides as her blue eyes darkened in rage. The next minute, Buffy was on the ground, a small orb of electrical blue energy having shot out from Brennan so quickly that neither woman had any chance to realize what had happened before it was over.

Quickly scrambling to her feet, as she sucked down air, Buffy no longer had any sign of mockery on her face as she arched an eyebrow at Brennan and muttered, "What...are...you?"

Gritting her teeth, Brennan inhaled and exhaled several times as she said, "A _very _dangerous woman whom you'd be wise to avoid in the future."

Turning, Brennan reached for her purse and began to rummage in it. After a moment, she quickly withdrew a small rectangle of white cardboard covered in black ink. Brennan stared at the familiar FBI logo, even more familiar telephone number, and intimately familiar name and title emblazoned on the business card. She pursed her lips as she felt nauseous for a moment as anger continued to bubble up in her. She then crumbled the card in her hand and clenched it in her fist for a moment, before she thrust it at Buffy as hard as she could.

"You don't believe he's happy?" Brennan muttered, the words tearing from her mouth, each one causing her a sharp spike of pain as she spat them at the Slayer. "You don't believe he's better off and has the life he's always wanted, here, with me—his wife and the mother of his child? Fine. Then go see for yourself. But, be warned. If you thought what I just did was painful, you should know I wasn't even really trying. Next time, however, you can bet your bottle-blonde dye job that I will be. So, either way, make your choice, but do it at your own peril," Brennan finished. "In the meantime, we're done here."

She then grabbed her bags, tossed the cup of lukewarm tea in the nearby trash can, and stormed off, leaving the Slayer to watch her as she disappeared in an impressive huff of barely-controlled rage.

* * *

**-tbc-**

* * *

**A/N2**: So, there we have it. How many hundreds of thousands of words was _that_ little showdown in the making? We have no idea. But, hopefully it lived up to everyone's expectations. And, on that note, we just wanted to also add, anyone who has read through the 7 previously published stories in this 9-part story arc know what the ladies of Dharmasera think of Buffy and Angel. However, at the same time, believe it or not, we've tried really hard not to make the Buffy, as represented in our story, into a one-dimensional charactericture/mockery of her canon portrayal. So, hopefully, as some previous reviewers had wondered, the Buffy of this universe didn't suffer a _complete _character assassination. But, if anyone thinks she did...oh, well. We _did_ try.

And, on that note, what's up next? Bren is pissed. Where might she go? And who else might she run into? And, considering this is a Dharmasera piece, how in the hell have we gone this long without a Booth sighting? Where is he? Want to know the answers to all these questions and more? Then stayed tuned. Part IV is in final edits as we speak, and we don't anticipate there being as long a publication delay between Part III and Part IV as there was between Part II and Part III. And, in the meantime, if you still need a fix of Dharmasera's Brennan and Booth, don't be afraid to check out Twitter where both characters maintain a lively dialogue with each other and their fans (usernames WitchyBren and Angel_Booth).

As ever, thanks for reading!


	4. Part IV: Dealing with the Fallout

**A Would-be Reunion**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

**A/N: **We're glad so many people liked the showdown between Brennan and the Slayer in the last chapter. Thanks to everyone who left reviews, especially some of them which are literary masterpieces unto themselves. Moving on...for those hoping who were hoping that they'd see a conversation between Booth and his former flame, alas! We're sorry to say that you'll be disappointed, since that won't be happening in this story. However, for those who have been feeling a bit of Angel-Booth withdrawal, you may now rejoice!

**UNF** **Alert: **We think we've come the closest in this story to needing such a warning in this chapter. We'll let you decide for yourselves if an "UNF Watch"(possibility of UNF-like conditions emerging) as opposed to an "UNF Warning" (a distinct probability of UNF-like conditions manifesting themselves) is warranted. And, yes, to answer everyone's questions ahead of time...we, the ladies of Dharmasera, are evil teases. But, if you didn't know that about us by now, we have to ask...where have you been?

* * *

**Part IV: Dealing with the Fallout**

* * *

Still riled up after her confrontation with Buffy Summers at the coffee cart, Brennan knew she was feeling the cumulative results of an acute chemical imbalance as waves of adrenaline, testosterone, and other hormones fueled her actions in a type of angry haze that she knew Booth would term 'autopilot.' Making her way back to the Jeffersonian, she bypassed going back to her office in favor of heading for where her car was parked in the Jeffersonian's substructure. A couple minutes later, she was pulling her silver Mercedes into D.C. traffic as she headed home to her loft in Georgetown, her mind chaotically replaying and processing the significance of her encounter with the infamous Slayer from Sunnydale.

For the most part, Brennan knew, rationally, that she should be pleased. She was no longer in the presence of Buffy Summers. Hopefully, her unexpected display of magic would warn the Slayer into going back to whatever hole she'd metaphorically climbed out of never to return. And, if for some reason she decided to follow-up on the information that Brennan had given her, then it would be Booth's problem to deal with the Slayer once and for all.

_Like he should've done __years__ ago_, Brennan thought bitterly. _Talk about leaving something too long undone. Fuck._

However, even as Brennan drove home, she couldn't help but feel the same feelings of anger, bitterness, rejection, and resentment she'd always felt because of Buffy Summers. Now that she had actually interacted with her, those feelings took on a new meaning for the forensic anthropologist even as she considered some of the hurtful things the younger woman had said. Indeed, some of the words the petite blonde had said _had _cut Brennan—_badly_. The exchange had stirred up some old insecurities that had gnawed at Brennan for many years, and combined with the hormones that she knew were out of whack because of the progression of her pregnancy, she didn't know whether to burst into tears or to punch someone or something as hard as she could. In fact, all she _did _know was that, for once, she didn't want to simply sweep them under some metaphorical rug and ignore them as she usually did. No, she was upset—and even more importantly, she was scared. Buffy had given a voice to the very things she'd been worried about for months, ever since that night on Halloween when one stage of her life had ended and another had begun. She now had the life and family she'd always wanted, and she was scared beyond belief that she might lose it, least of all because of a woman like Buffy Summers.

Feeling as if she had no control over anything anymore—her body, her life, her future—by the time Brennan pulled into the loft's parking garage, she'd made at least one decision. She wanted to take back some control of her life in the only way she'd ever known how to do so: she wanted to fight for it. And, in particularly, she wanted to fight with the one person whom she irrationally blamed for her finally having both given her everything she'd ever wanted and also for inadvertently bringing into their lives someone who threatened to take it all away:

_Booth._

Given her decision and goal, fortunately for her—but unfortunately for him—Booth was already at home when Brennan arrived. He'd left the office a couple of hours early to catch the last few innings of the afternoon game the Phillies were playing against the Braves at Turner Field. While Booth was in the kitchen, Brennan shoved her keys in the loft's deadbolt, unlocked the front door, kicked it open, threw her keys in the bowl she kept on their foyer table for just that purpose with enough force that they loudly jangled in the air, and then tossed her messenger bag to the floor with a loud grunt. She slammed the door shut behind her, feeling a bit better when she heard the loud, thundering echo of the door being shut reverberate in the entryway.

Booth was in the kitchen getting a beer when she'd come home, and he was about to call out a greeting when he heard the racket Brennan made coming in the door. He ducked his head around the corner into the hallway to see what was going on while Brennan's back was turned to him. As if he couldn't immediately tell by her body language that something was most definitely wrong, Booth knew he was in trouble when he saw a very, very faint aura of blue electricity crackling around Brennan's entire body.

"Oh, shit," he muttered as he went back into the kitchen as soon as he recognized that something so _not _good was happening. "Fuck me, that's not good," he muttered to himself as he quietly put the beer back into the refrigerator knowing that he wasn't going to get a chance to drink the bottle of ice-cold Yuengling that he'd chilled in the freezer anytime soon. "_Shit_." He wondered what exactly had set her off, and, giving one last longing glance at his cold bottle of beer before he closed the fridge door, how long it would take for her to find her way to the other side of whatever mood swing had currently taken her over.

As he watched her drop her bag on the floor seemingly without any thought to its contents—in particular, her laptop—he knew she was extremely pissed off about something and loaded for bear. _Who swiped her Hostess cupcake? _he wondered. He had a sense that this was more than just pregnancy hormones. _I haven't seen her this pissed in... _

He furrowed his brow and looked up at the ceiling as he tried to remember _when _he'd last seen her this angry. _Maybe that one Halloween when I hooked up with Eve because of Lorne and his out-of-friggin'-control empathic subconscious demon sleep played Simon Says with my libido? _He shook his head slightly. _Nope_—_I mean, she was pissed, but I don't think_—_I'm not certain, but I don't think it was this bad...she wasn't that...well, pissed off. Damn. _He thumbed through his mental Rolodex of memories, 150-some years' worth, and tried to isolate a time he'd seen her as angry as she appeared to be in that moment. At last, he settled on the only instance that he could even come close to recalling when he'd seen her so aggressively hostile.

Of all the times that she'd been angry with him—which, granted, had been quite a few times, considering all of the years they'd been together and the difficult years they'd weathered, both in London in the late 19th century, and during his years in Sunnydale in the late 1990s—he could recall only _one_ time when she'd worn her rage as plainly as she did at that moment. It had been many, many years since he'd seen her like that, and he felt the hair on his arms prick up as he remembered the way he had been the last time he saw her this way.

That place, and the person he'd been then, seemed in a sense very far away, almost alien to him, but yet the memory of that place and that person was no less vivid even though a century and a half had passed since that night. Perhaps it was strange, he mused, that for all the years that he'd known her, and of all the fights he'd had with her in all those years, that the most livid he could remember seeing her was in the very first weeks after they'd first met. Maybe it was because in those first years—when he'd been a soulless, hedonistic evil demon and she'd been a powerful but private and deeply-guarded witch which morality was a dark gray on a good day—the banter between them has always been tightly-wound with a sexual tension that no amount of passionate fucking seemed capable of unwinding. So when they'd fought, the tension sharpened the edges of their verbal dueling and have given their battles a rawness that was untempered, at least for a couple of decades, by any sort of fondness or tenderness that had eventually grown into fateful bonds of love that now interlinked them so much that no one knew where one began and the other started.

Booth bit back a faint smirk at the thought of how any number of times he recalled encounters with her that would have ended with them fighting or fucking, or some sort of twisted combination of the two. _God, _he thought, _I sure hope that kind of thing is all behind us, 'cause I'm not sure I can handle that sorta thing at this point._

He stood there for several more moments in silence and watched her stalk across the living room, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he remembered standing on the balcony of her Tudor-style terraced home in London and arguing with her—or, rather, standing there while she railed at him, her limbs tight with unsprung tension as her eyes flickered with anger.

"_You've got a lot of fucking gall, Angelus, to come over here like this," she spat at him, anger radiating from her body._

_Brennan was clearly not as pleased to see Angelus as he'd expected her to be after their three-day marathon of epic fucking the previous week._

"_What the hell are you talkin' about, Brennan?" he grunted, trying to soothe her ire. "You said you wanted to see me again, so here I am." He looked at her with a lazy, toothy grin, his eyes skating up and down her tall, curvy form,__the shapes and even textures of which were scarcely concealed beneath the thin cream colored cotton nightgown and sleek midnight blue silk robe she wore. His gaze skimmed along the line of her collarbone and down to her waist, pausing to linger on the round swell of her hips before sliding back up to her bosom and come to rest with an appreciative leer at the faint shadow marking the cleft between her breasts. _

"_Oh, right," she sneered, scrunching up her nose as she sniffed the air. "I want to see you when I can smell another slut's juices on you so easily that even your cheap cologne doesn't cover it up? Really, Angelus?"_

"_What?" he coughed. "What are ya talkin' about 'cheap cologne,' mmm? First off, it's not 'cologne,' alright? It's aftershave lotion. Cologne is perfume worn by limp-dicked ponces who wouldn't know a woman if she had him by the short 'n' curlies. Secondly, lass, it's not cheap—it's from D.R. Harris and Company, Limited on St. James' Street. The ladies quite like the smell of sandalwood. It's exotic, ya know. Mysterious and intense and wicked temptin', just like me."_

_Ignoring his remark with a dismissive shake of her head and pointed roll of her eyes, she asked, "Tell me...were you trolling around Spitalfields again?" Her eyes narrowed as she saw him blink. "You were, so don't lie. I know it." His cocky, amused grin faded from his mouth as her accusatory tone sunk in, and as his lip curled back in annoyance, he returned her hostile glare with one of his own, mirroring her response. "You're a fool, Angelus," she spat. "A goddamn fool. Even knowing I was here and that if you wanted a tumble, that I would gladly give it to you, instead you went to the nastiest corner of the East End and spent the evening with some two-bit whore, and now you come traipsing over here, and you expect me to just open my legs so you can swive me with the same slimy prick that's still dripping with her disgusting and revolting wetness?"_

_Angelus's hardened jaw loosened then dropped open as he raised his eyebrows, puzzled at the intensity of her response. He'd expected that she'd be annoyed that he'd come to her without warning or any arrangement of any kind, but he figured that once her initial surprise had worn off, she'd quickly warm to his presence, and they could get down to business. He was eager to once again be able to enjoy the sumptuous pleasure of her warm, silky flesh and not insubstantial enthusiastic sexual skills. He wanted to see if she was a good as he remembered her to be. Given how he'd left her purring the last time he'd left her bed—but for the verbal tongue lashing she'd given him when he made it clear he had to leave her because he was expected by another woman elsewhere, which was something he chose to ignore—her reaction made absolutely no sense to him. Considering that she was the one who more or less had shanghaied him in the alleyway behind the Shoreditch theater where the boxing match where they'd met had been held, and that he'd stayed abed with her for four days, leaving her bed only to feed before sliding back between her sheets for another round of intense fucking, he couldn't begin to think about a single reason as to why she wouldn't be as eager to resume that fucking as he was. She'd wanted him from the word go—that much had been blatantly clear. She knew who and what he was, so he couldn't quite figure out what the problem was. _

_They'd come to an arrangement, he'd thought, a very simple arrangement based on their mutual need and desire to fuck one another silly with no strings attached. So why would she have a problem if he was doing what he normally did in that he always did, feeding, fucking, and killing whomever he pleased since none of that had anything to do with her? He didn't understand why she had any emotional reaction to his comings and goings whatsoever or, moreover, why it seemed he cared so much about her strong reaction to him. Her reaction to him, and his to her, left him feeling unsettled, and that unsettled feeling itself unmoored him. _

"_Come on, lass," he said in a lilting tone, shrugging away the confusing swirl of emotions that fluttered in his belly and the slew of odd thoughts that cluttered his mind in a very disquieting and chaotic way. He quickly focused himself on the one thing he was sure of in that moment: his desire for her. So, setting aside the fog of thought and emotion with a distracted blink, he flashed a cocky grin and waggled his eyebrows. "I'm a man of great appetites," he said. "Surely you see the benefit of havin' me go and take the edge off before comin' over here. I'll be able to pay more attention to your end of things and—"_

"_Oh, I see." Brennan took two steps towards him and stood toe to toe with him, her nostrils flaring in rage as her pale eyes burned with fury. "You actually think you were doing me a favor fucking that whore just now?" she asked, the corners of her mouth curved into a sardonic smile at the preposterousness of the idea. "So I should actually be thanking you for being so considerate to take the time this evening to fuck another woman, a low-born, unlettered, unsophisticated tart who probably came to Shoreditch from Birmingham or Manchester hoping to make it in the theaters only to find that the men of London would rather buy a ticket to ride her and hear her scream than to watch her dance and hear her sing. How old was she, Angelus? Fourteen? Fifteen? Tell me. Was it just about getting your dinner or did you fuck her too because you were bored?"_

_Angelus quirked an eyebrow, licked his lips at the memory and chuckled. "Well, this time, I just—"_

"_Get out," she growled, taking another half step closer to him so that their noses nearly touched before he began to back up. Every step he took backwards, she followed, until a few moments later, she'd steered him out the French doors that separated her bedroom from the balcony outside. "I don't want you filling my house or, worse yet, my bed, with the awful, rank stench of that nasty whore you dipped your wick into tonight."_

_His brows knit hard over his eyes as he tilted his head askance as his nostrils twitched at the peppery smell of her rising anger. "Come on, Brennan—"_

"_Don't you dare," she warned him, her voice cutting with the icy edge it took on more with each passing minute of their argument. "Now leave before I do something we'll both regret. And, I don't mean just rescinding my invitation to you."_

"_You wouldn't dare," he muttered, the corner of his mouth hanging open in a crooked grin. "Not even you, Brennan. Not even you has that gall. Now quit messin' with me."_

"_Oh, really?" she blinked at him. "Why don't you just try me, hmmm?" As her eyes narrowed, their pale color grew even brighter, framed by her dark eyelashes and her carefully-groomed auburn eyebrows which formed a slender yet rigid mantle over her face, the delicate features of which had hardened with each passing second. She pressed her lips together in a firm and unforgiving line, and Angelus felt a pricking sensation against his skin as her indignation crackled in the air between them with a palpable energy that made her blue eyes flash in a way that reminded him of the first time those eyes had met his—the night he'd awakened, suspended from a ceiling beam, as she 'd shot him a glare that had dripped of warning while calmly wiping the blood of a man off her dagger as he lay gasping and gurgling his last breaths on her sitting room floor. "Because, just in case you haven't gotten the hint, Angelus, hell will freeze over before I let you get your tainted cock anywhere near me so long as it's still wet with another woman's fluids or if I can so much as catch the tiniest whiff of another woman on you."_

"_Aye, lass," he said, leaning back against the wall of the balcony, bracing himself with his hands as he cocked his head to the side and smiled at her. "Let's not be hasty, now," he said with an edge of amusement, his voice low and almost liquid as he surveyed the way her nightclothes clung to her curves. He felt and smelled her anger in the air between them, but he found the danger that hung about her more arousing than anything else, so he gave it little pause as he shifted his weight from one hip to the other as he felt his body begin to respond to her, ignoring an instinct that he'd normally follow in almost any other situation. __Licking his lips slowly as his balls hitched, he smiled and said, "Come on, lass, you know that no woman comes close to you as far as—"_

_Brennan gritted her teeth and took another step towards him, grabbing a fistful of his shirt in each hand as she shook him with a guttural grunt. Angelus cleared his throat and swallowed, his Adam's apple dipping in his throat as his dark brown eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to speak, but before he could do any more than gasp, she jerked his finespun linen shirt again as her mouth twisted in an angry sneer. "That's right, Angelus," she hissed. "No woman comes close to me. Which means you, you arrogant piece of shite, aren't going to come close to me so long as I can smell even the slightest trace of another woman's scent on you. You make me sick. In fact, I think I want to vomit right now just..."_

_She released his shirt and took a step back, grimacing as her eyes leveled a hard, burning stare at him. He stood there dumbly for a few moments, his brows raised and his forehead creased in a puzzled look as he watched her seething, the edge of her square jaw partly concealed in shadow under the faint light of the gaslights lining the street below. _

"_Brennan, lass, please," he said, pushing himself away from the edge of the balcony and stepping towards her again. "You've got nothin' to be afraid of, ya know. That baggage back in Spitalfields, she had nice big titties, like yours, 'tis true, but I like your nipples much better. Yours are bigger, you know, the way they fit so perfectly in my hands..." Angelus held his hands up and waggled his thick, long fingers in the air with a suggestive smirk. "Mmm, and yours have a bit more texture when I put my tongue on 'em, and, besides, she was a real loud and brassy red-head, and I don't really think that pink, freckly skin of hers really holds any kind o' shine to yours when you're all flushin' the way you do when I'm fuckin' ya because her skin and hair clashed horribly when she came." _

_He made a murmuring sound that hummed deep in his throat as he briefly savored a memory. "I mean, she wasn't a total waste o' time," he said with a slight shrug. "It's true. She had a few redeeming qualities, that one." He winked at Brennan as he chuckled. "Since I don't like to speak ill of the dead—" His slight smirk turned into wide grin as he wagged his dark brunette eye brows at Brennan. "But I've gotta give credit where credit was due, so in all fairness, she did, you know, have just a couple talents about her." He paused and then snickered. "She wasn't much of a fuck, to be honest, 'cause she's been turnin' her tricks for a bit too long and was a bit too stretched out down there for my likin' by the time I backed her up against this alleyway wall near the public house on Arrow Lane. But, my o' my, she _did _have a good mouth on 'er. A big mouth, actually—kinda like you, lass."_

_He looked up at Brennan again, unable to help himself as he waited to see her reaction. _

"_Aye, she may ha' been all used up 'tween her legs, but I'll tell ya, that girl knew how to suck a cock." He punctuated his claim with an emphatic nod of his head. "I know you may not know this, but lemme tell ya, most of 'em just suck. But this one, aye...this one, she knew that 'twasn't just about deep-throatin' the thing, but workin' that wee tongue of hers around the tip real good-like an' usin' those lips o' hers to give a good tug on the skin there almost like she'd been taught how to do it by Mary Magdalene at the height of her workin' gal days herself." He rolled his shoulder back with a shiver and grunted out a laugh. "I mean, I did have t'keep tellin' her to suck harder and faster, 'cause she kept holdin' back a bit, but with a wee bit o' guidance there, she didna do too bad." _

_Angelus paused for a moment, arched his brow, and then gave Brennan a crooked grin as he thought about how mind-destroyingly erotic it would be to see her slender pink lips slide up and down the length of his hard cock. The thought of it sent a frisson of excitement racing up his spine and had him tugging at the waistband of his wool trousers and adjusting them slightly as he sought to give his tightening groin a bit more room. He scratched his belly mindlessly as the dark umber of his eyes flickered with a mixture of lust and laughter, and he then smirked as he said, "Ya know, lass, I'd be happy to give you the same tips, you know, when the time comes, since I think it could benefit us both in the long run." He punctuated his statement with a smirk as he jerked his chin in her direction._

_Brennan's expression hardened instantly at his words, her teeth clenched together with enough force that her molars ground against one another as her square jaw shifted forward slightly. Her bright eyes glimmered with hate and narrowed with disdain. "You know what, Angelus?" She cut him off sharply when the charming vampire opened his mouth to respond to her question. "That was __not__ a rhetorical question, you stupid, smarmy bastard," she snapped. Shaking her head, she huffed, "You really are a fucking piece of work, Angelus," Brennan huffed, the indignation and insult she felt at his affront clearly written all over her face. "Do you really think that, after three centuries, I need a man anyone, let alone a man, to tell me how to properly suck a cock?" _

"_Well," he snickered. "Mine __is__ bigger than the usual, ya know, so there's a good chance that your usual techniques might not be sufficient to work me over properly without poppin' that lovely jaw of yours out o' whack." He continued to smirk at her before he conceded her point with a small chuckle, "But, aye, lass. Fair enough, I know you're a smart wench, so I'm sure you'll eventually climb that steep learnin' curve o' yours and do just fine with a little coachin' by the likes of myself so that I'll be shootin' my salty wad into your waiting wetness before too long—" _

"_Ha!" she cut him off with an emphatic shout. "Fat lot of that happening, you arrogant, Irish prick." She forced herself to stop grinding her teeth after she took a few precious seconds to keep from letting Angelus know how insulted she really was at his comments. Instead, she narrowed her eyes once more as she retorted his prior comments. "You should be so lucky to have your cock sucked by me, Angelus," she sneered. _

"_Aye, you know all about the luck o' the Irish, I'm quite sure," he quipped. "An' when it comes to a good suck, I'm feelin' more than a' bit lucky, 'specially with your hot, sexy lips all moist an' ready for me an' such, so how's about we get a move on to that good fuckin' we both know we want, since I know those other lips o' yours are all ready for it, hmmm? Aye, a good suck and fuck would be just the thing, and with that on the card tonight, I'm pretty lucky since there's no woman in England I'd rather see sucking and fucking me than your lovely self." He nodded at her, flashing her another grin, as he finished making his brash statement._

_Brennan stared at him for a long moment, not quite certain if he was serious or not. When he continued to smirk at her, the bravado he wore on his sleeve never disappearing as he waiting for her to accept his brash invitation, Brennan scowled. "Right, Angelus," Brennan snorted again. "I'm quite sure that's an accurate statement. But, just in case there's any doubt, I assure you, after being sucked off by me, no other woman's mouth will come close to being able to get you to come as hard and as fast as I can." _

_A lascivious, eager smile cracked the vampire's face before he responded. "I dunno, lass. She had...well, let's just say she had this trick that she did with her tongue—I mean, damn, that was fuckin' nice the way she did that," he stopped, shot Brennan another smirk, and then continued with a nod__as he felt a distinctly happy tingle in his limbs. He could see her smoldering with each word he spoke and the spicy scent of her irritation tickled his nose like the finest smoked Hungarian paprika, and each whiff of her anger and flicker in her eyes excited him as he goaded her, fanning the flames of her anger as her face flushed a deeper, sexier shade of clam-like pink that reminded Angelus very much of the color of her delicate intimate lips and how they looked when slick and swollen and wet right before she was about to come. He savored the image as he continued egging her on, curious to see if he could push her anger over the edge with his words just as he'd pushed her lust over the edge with his tongue and fingers and cocks more than once. "Well, she did this wee bit with her throat somehows so she took me all the way in even though she was a spritely lil' lass, then she'd wiggle that wee tongue up an' down my cock like she was drawin' the rungs of a ladder with it, and then she'd go back to nibblin' on my foreskin and sweet hell, it didna take more'n a few minutes before she was wipin' me come off her chin." _

_Angelus pursed his lips in an attempt to hold back a smile as he watched Brennan's eyes narrow as her nostrils continued to flare. "Now don't get me wrong, lass," he said, holding up a finger__as he detected that she was on the edge of complete disgust, and decided he was ready to reel her back in with a charming wink and a grin so he could reap the delicious benefits of her lusty anger. "A wee thing like that's got nothin' on you. Bein' with you is like a whole 'nother class o' fuckin' entirely. I mean, that girl knew how to get me hard and make me come, but you, lass—you get me hard before you ever e'en touch me, an' the way you tease me, it hurts how bad I want you." He raised his chin and smirked as he knew just the thought of how she affected him was making his already tight groin even tighter as his balls hitched hard again. "You make me so damn hard could, I could drive fuckin' nails with my cock." He reached for her, letting his fingertips skate over the edge of her upper arm as he grinned and said, "No two-shilling East End skank could do what you do to me, lass."_

"_Don't touch me," she snarled, reaching out and grabbing his shirt with her fists and shoving him backwards towards the ornamental wrought-iron railing. "You fucking worthless piece of shit. You really think that you can come into __my__ house, acting like my lord and master, then start telling me about this wonderful other scrubber that you just tupped, all the while, expecting me to get wet and so excited that I'd just flop down on my bed, spread my legs, and let you start fucking me?"_

_Angelus couldn't tell if Brennan was serious or not, and then finally shrugged as she continued to stare at him. "Well, yeah," he answered. "Why wouldn't I?"_

_Brennan's eyes flashed at his answer. Her pinkened face flushed bright red as her blue eyes started to crackle. "You stupid son-of-a-bitch," she growled. "How dare you__**—**__"_

"_How dare I?" he mocked back. His lip curled back in a crooked smirk and he laughed. "I dare because I know ya want nothin' more than to invite me between your sheets, lass, and feel me between your sweet, luscious thighs. And 'cause I know just how wet an' excited ya are, mmm?" He licked his lips with a lascivious swipe of his tongue. "And 'cause I know that you're jus' dyin' to work me over with those lovely lovin' skills o' yours and show me how much better ya are at fuckin' than that little thing back in Spitalfields..." _

"_You wouldn't know a woman who was genuinely skilled at fucking if she kicked you in the balls, Angelus," Brennan snapped. Her eyes suddenly flashed again, almost as if a point of realization was crystallized in her mind as a new idea suddenly occurred to her. "Point in case," she snarled. "I, the best woman you will ever fucking meet when it comes to anyone who will ever be able to fuck you as hard, as creatively, or as good as I have so that when you finally come you forget your own name." Her voice trailed off with another growl as she suddenly brought her leg up and kneed him between the legs. "Even as I'm kicking you in the balls, you still would never recognize me for my worth." Angelus let out a howl of pain as he fell forward from where she'd kicked him. He doubled over slightly, prevented from moving much more by the fact that she still held him tightly by the shirt. He coughed and gagged, lifting up his head to say something to her. The moment she saw his mouth fall open and his Adam's apple bob as if he were about to speak, she clenched her teeth and roared as she summoned up every bit of strength she had and shoved him against the railing. "You dumb, stupid bastard!" she grunted as she jerked each fistful of his shirt up as she pushed him over the top of the waist-high railing. _

_Angelus gasped with surprise as he felt himself flip over the top of the railing and fall one and a half stories to the ground below. Landing on his back, he would have had the wind knocked out of him but for the simple fact that he hadn't taken a single breath for the purpose of respiration in over a century. He looked up and saw her glaring down at him from above, her eyes flashing blue in the dim gaslight. _

"_You fucking bastard," she called down to him. "I don't want to see you, hear you, smell you, or frankly even hear your damned name until you've washed every trace of that whore and every other woman you might deign to keep company with off of your body. I expect it'll take five or six days, but more likely a week, for the rank odor of that East End slut to leave your pores. So don't bother coming back until the only smell on you is the smell of your own sweat." She held the inside of her lip firmly between her teeth as she stared down at him and the stunned, confused look on his face. "Until then, have a good evening, Angelus." His name passed from her lips in a sneer that dripped with venom that, until that very moment, he had never heard from any other person—be they human, vampire or demon._

"_Brennan," he called up to her weakly from where he lay in the muck and filfth of the cobblestone street in front of Brennan's house. "Lass?"_

"_Goodnight, Angelus," she said, ignoring his plea, before turning around and slamming the French doors behind her and adding over her shoulder, "And, goodbye." _

Booth blinked away the memory, cringing a bit at the uncouth crassness of the man he'd used to be as the sound of his own words, spoken in a lazy Galway brogue, echoed in his mind. A part of him hated the thought of who he had been and the way he'd treated her, but as he sucked in a breath and briefly closed his eyes, he reminded himself that he was no longer that man even as he recalled how the man he'd used to be received his comeuppance and uncovered the full potential of her fury not quite a week after they'd first met and slept together.

Another part of him, though, grinned a little at the memory of her calling him a 'cocky bastard' and couldn't help but beam with a certain amusement not only that she had put up with him as long as she had, but that somehow she'd found something attractive about his elder, soulless self's bluster. Booth recalled how, when he'd told her that her father had punched him in the balls while the two were exchanging blows during Max's arrest a couple of years before, something had flickered behind her cool blue eyes and curved the corners of her lips that he hadn't quite understood the meaning of at the time.

_But I know, _he smirked. _She was the only one who'd ever nailed me in the nuts before that, even though she only did it that one time. _As he stood there watching her, he would have sworn that he could feel her rage rolling off of her in waves. He wondered what in the world he could have possibly done to rouse her anger this time, and hoped for his sake that she wouldn't chose to break her record and knee him in the balls this time. _Shit, _he cursed silently as he remembered looking up at her from the street below as he dusted himself off, narrowly rolling out of the way of a passing carriage-wheel as he watched her storm off her balcony and slam her French doors shut. _And she wasn't even pregnant then. _His hand moved protectively over his groin, lingering over his fly for a fleeting moment before he sheepishly thumbed the dark orange lacquered face of his belt buckle. _Awww, hell, _he thought dejectedly. _I don't know who fucked up what, but what I do know is that whoever got her panties in a bunch has got me so royally fucked. _He then nodded to himself as if there was no doubt in his mind as to how his night was going to go. _Yup. That's it. I'm definitely so very, __very__ fucked. Just...damn._

After a few more seconds of nervous silence, Booth decided that letting her simmer undisturbed wasn't going to keep the kettle of her apparent anger from boiling over, but that she might take his continued silence as him ignoring her, so he allowed himself an encouraging nod and called out to her. "Heya, Bones," he said, pasting what he hoped was an innocent-looking grin of welcome on his face even as his voice was edged with caution while he stood in the doorway separating the kitchen from the foyer. "How's it going?"

Her head snapped up as she saw Booth suddenly poking his head out of the kitchen and took a step towards him. But when she heard the sharp _clack _of the heels she'd been wearing because of the meeting with the Jeffersonian Board of Trustees that she'd gone to earlier that day, before her run in with the Slayer at the coffee cart, she stopped. Reaching down, she grunted as she tried to maintain her balance as she reached to pull off one heel and then the other, not really caring that she'd already ruined the buckles on the sandals she'd worn while on her walk to the Mall when she'd stumbled in her haste to get back to her car at the Jeffersonian. The heels that she'd stowed in her backseat had been her only alternative, and on top of everything else that had happened to her during the day, her feet were now killing her. She wobbled a bit, her center of gravity a bit uncertain, and then she saw Booth start towards her unconsciously to help her with a hand extended.

"Don't," she snapped at him, clearly warning him to stay away from her. "I'm fine."

Booth opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again as he surveyed her face. Her jaw was tense and her brow was deeply creased. "Okay, so, how'd the meeting go?" he asked finally. "I know you hate those things."

Clasping the heels in one hand, Brennan squared her shoulders and brushed past him, her now bare feet slapping hard against the polished wood floors of their loft. "Fine," she grunted as she walked past him and into the living room.

_Fine, _Booth grumbled to himself. _Right. _He watched her as she breezed right past him and knew she was anything but fine.

"So you sure you don't want to talk or something?" he asked, his brow quirked slightly as he tenderly nibbled the inside of his lip. He took a deep breath and held it as he stood there, his eyes following her but keeping a certain distance as he tried to discern the reason for her foul mood.

Shaking her head, Brennan snapped, "No, I don't. I _really _don't."

"Something happen today, Bones?" he asked, pressing her out of concern as to what could've gotten her so upset, but knowing he needed to tread lighting with her lest he set her off for what he suspected wasn't the first time that day. "You seem a bit..." He paused and swallowed heavily. "I don't know...ummm...upset?" He followed her into the living room. "So, come on, Bones. Tell me. What's going on? You seem, well_—_" He hesitated for a beat before he shrugged and continued, "well, a little stressed out." He raised his eyebrows and gave her a tentative, sad-eyed look. "You know, a couple of nights ago, when we were sitting on the couch, snuggled up real nice after dinner, and I was rubbing your neck? You seemed like you were easing up a bit and we were kind of in a nice place, mmm? And then your dad called, and it was like dropping a tray full of dishes in a crowded restaurant." He sighed. "It kinda killed the moment, Bren. I don't know about you, but I've been a bit..." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Well, you know...a bit, umm, you know...wound up since then." _It doesn't help that I've been nursing a pretty painful case of blue balls for the better part of the last month,_ he added mentally with a frown. "I can only imagine that you..."

His voice trailed off as he saw her shoulders tense and heard her make a strange sound, her fingers tensing around the black heels she held clutched in her hand before she spun around and faced him. Booth saw the glimmer in her deep blue gaze and quickly swallowed as the image of her standing on her Cheapside balcony suddenly flashed again before his eyes. He glanced down at her hands, noting the tension in her grip and remembering the way those fingers, so strong and demanding and white-knuckled, could work him over in the most mind-rippingly delicious way. He noted the firm line of her lips and tried desperately not to think about the kind of wicked magic those lips had wrought on him so many times before. There was little doubt that she was, as his Pops liked to say, wound tighter than an eight-day clock, and even though he knew he shouldn't feel that way and he tried not to, Booth couldn't help but feel a little tingle at the base of his spine as her anger crackled in the air between them.

She narrowed her eyes as she tilted her head at him and warned, "Don't look at me like that."

"Huh?" Booth said, snapping back to attention as he suddenly realized that she'd somehow busted him. _How the fuck can she do that? _he wondered. _Maybe she's never really let on with me, never told me she could get inside my old noggin' just in case she needed to have some ace to play later on down the line. God, help me if she's not just a witch, but if she's actually a psychic, too. Because if that's the case, then I'm really, really fucked. Nothing I can do about it now, though, but see what happens. So either way, here goes nothing._ Pouting his lips a little as he tried to give off an innocent look, he asked, "Look at you like what?"

"Like _that,_" Brennan said as she pointed at him with her index finger. "I know that look, Booth, and after the day I've had today, I'm not in the mood for it, okay? So back off."

"What?" he croaked, his forehead creased in confusion. "I didn't...wait. That is, Bones...I, uhh, I-I wasn't trying to, umm..." He reached up and raked his fingers through his dark brown hair as his mind raced in search of a way to defuse her mood. The image of a dog rolling over on its back came briefly to mind as he wondered if the best thing to do was to give her whatever she wanted. A niggling voice in the back of his mind murmured that she might be too far gone to want anything from him other than his testicles in a jar, but he dismissed that voice and cocked his head to the side as he decided to give total deference the old-school try. "Come on, lass. Tell me what I can do to help, okay?"

Pursing her lips, Brennan said, "Do you know, that as of today, it's been twenty-six days since we had sex?" She blinked at him, watching for his reaction, and when he seemed too flummoxed to respond, she added, "I know how long it's been exactly because I go to see the OB every fourteen days. I've seen her twice since the last time we had sex because she and I have had two separate discussions about how my body is handling the fluctuating hormone levels and increased amount of blood flow to my pelvic region. And, in both discussions I've had with her, I've been unable to tell her that I've been able to ameliorate the discomfort I've felt because of them with any satisfying sexual encounters." Brennan paused and then added as she shot a look at Booth, "My doctor suggested perhaps I should get some new batteries for my vibrator if my husband wasn't willing to help assist me with the discomfort I've been feeling because of my increased libido."

Booth reached up and scratched the back of his head as he struggled to figure out how to respond. "Umm, well," he stammered. "Hey, umm..." He shifted his weight from one hip to the other and glanced at the floor before raising his eyes to meet hers again. "Bones, umm, you don't have to do that, you know. I, ahh, could help you with that, if you wanted me to..."

Arching her other eyebrow at him, she countered, "Then why haven't you done so before now?"

Running his hand absentmindedly through his hair again, Booth sighed as he said, "Jeez, Bones. I mean, it's not like I haven't wanted to...you know that."

Shaking her head, Brennan replied, "No, I don't." Her lips thinned as she gave him a pointed glare.

"Well," Booth tried again. "You know, Bones, the last couple of times I, well, that I...err, well...look_—_"

Suddenly, Brennan, already impatient and frustrated with Booth's inability to speak plainly, snapped, "You what, Booth? What are you trying to say?"

Booth's eyebrows flew up as he gazed back at her with a pleading look and deep creases cut across his forehead as the tips of his ears flushed a deep red.

"Come on, Bones," he said quickly, trying to buy himself some time as he wracked his brain for some way of defusing her ire. "You know I've tried to make a move on you a couple of times in the last few weeks, but every time I did, you know, you've kinda waved me off, so I decided to give you a little space to..." He read the hardening expression on her face and knew his explanation was doing anything but helping. "Look, baby...I know your body's changing and all and I didn't want to rush you or make you uncomfortable or anything, but—"

Her jaw still tight, Brennan retorted, "So you think I'm unattractive then? Is that it? I've gotten too damn unsightful and ungainly to get you hard enough to fuck me? Is that what you're trying to tell me, Booth? You wanted to fuck me in the last month, but I just wasn't doing the job anymore for you, hmmm? So you backed off until you could figure out some way to get your dick stiff enough to give your ugly wife a pity fuck? That's it, isn't it?"

"What?" His mouth gaped open as he realized how badly things were snowballing. "No," he blurted out. "God, no. That's not it, Bones. Never."

He stood there for a couple of seconds, mute as he struggled for a way to explain himself. As he watched her bright blue eyes smolder with anger and glimmer with unshaded hurt, the words began to tumble out of his mouth.

"Jesus, babe," he said, suddenly changing tactics. "God, nothing could be farther from the truth. You look gorgeous, baby. You _know _I love the way you look. I'd make a go at you any time. I can never get enough of you. You know that. Right?" He hesitated for a second, then felt somehow emboldened by the lewdness of her angry words. "You drive me crazy, lass," he said. "Fucking crazy. Do you know how fucking hot you are? I mean, really, if you had any idea how many times I've dropped you off at the lab and damn near blown through red lights on the way back to the Hoover so I could duck into the men's room to rub one out and take the edge off because there's no fucking way I could make it through a whole day with the kind of hard-on you left me with. You drive me so fucking nuts with how hot you are, I don't care if some other guy hears me grunting in the stall as I'm jerking off because I swear it's the only way I can have a prayer at being able to actually focus on my work after seeing you and your sexy self slink back into your lab. You have no idea, woman, how crazy you've been making me, or how..." He swallowed, his eyes skimming up and down her form as he felt himself seared by her angry gaze. "How goddamn delicious and totally fuckable you look. It's been killing me not being able to be buried to the hilt inside you these last few weeks, lass."

Brennan pressed her lips into a thin line for a minute, the blackness of her mascara-coated lashes making her blue eyes seem even more blue than their normal pristine hue as she considered her husband's cobbled-together mutterings. She then said, "If that's true, then why do you still want the red Viper?"

Booth shook his head in confusion. "What?" he coughed. "Wait. What does the color of a car have to do with me wanting to fuck you?" He heard his own voice edge higher as his mounting frustration began to bleed through his confusion, and it caused him to wince slightly. He coughed once to clear his throat and then said, "Really, Bones. What are you talking about?"

Crossing her arms, even as she retained control of the heels in her hands, her chin jutted out a bit as she nodded at him and answered, "The Viper. You still want the red one, do you not?"

"What?" His brow creased as he stared at her and shook his head again. "The Viper?"

Nodding, Brennan answered, "Yes, the Viper. Do you still want the red one?"

Booth looked at her, a wild-eyed confusion clear on his face before he nodded. "Yeah," he finally said. "I mean, if I'm getting one, and just one, even though I still don't see why we can't get both, since we've got the money and all, then yeah, I want the red one. But—what does the color of my car have anything to do with how often we have sex, Bones?"

He cringed a bit, gritting his teeth as he saw a flash of bright, angry blue that left no doubt in his mind that each word he said seemed to be digging him deeper and deeper into a hole which he was going to need a winch to yank himself out of.

"It matters because I know, okay?" she snapped, as her blue eyes widened. "I know the _real _reason why you want the red one and not the black one."

Booth leaned his head back, closed his eyes and sighed loudly, a faint growl rumbling in the back of his throat as he silently cursed himself, unsure in that moment whether he was more frustrated with his wife for being so stubbornly random or at himself for being unable to soothe her.

"Okay," he grunted. "Is this one of those games where you say something cryptic and I'm supposed to figure out what the hell you're talking about? Because if so, let's just call it a forfeit on my end, because I don't have a damn clue what the connection is. So what's really going on?"

"What's going on," her voice dripped in vitriol as her eyes continued to drill into him, "is that I know that the reason why you want the red one, and not the black one, is because if we get the black one, it's going to be too much of a reminder, isn't it? It's going to remind you of L.A., and me, and you and me in L.A., and you don't want to remember that, and it really pisses me off that you didn't just say that from the beginning because you find the memory of us having sex against the side of the black Viper to be so fucking distasteful that you want the car, which I said I'd buy for you, in a different color. Isn't that so?"

"Okay, wait," Booth said, throwing his hands up and taking a step towards her, his dark eyes narrowed as he warily approached what he knew to be the Bermuda Triangle of anger, surging pregnancy hormones, and sexual frustration. "Stop," he said. "Alright? Just stop. First off, I don't know what you're talking about. That...look, that time when we did it in the garage at Wolfram and Hart—against my black Viper—hell, that was pretty fucking hot. Like, really hot, which is fucking saying something because you and I have, well, we've done a lot of pretty fucking hot things over the years." He paused, chuckled at the memory, and then quickly sobered again as he looked back up at her and he shook his head. "And no, I don't have any kind of bad memory about that time, or that car, or us fucking against that car. I just want the red one because red's a fucking awesome color for a sports car. Classic, really. And I drive a black car every damn day. I don't want a black go-fast car. I want a _red _one." He paused, noting the hint of sadness in her pouted lips and the way her shoulders were slumped a bit despite the rigid tension that still held sway over her pregnant form. "You know I love red, Bren. And I love how fucking hot you look in red. I mean, you look wicked awesome in black, don't get me wrong. But you know I love you in red. I always have, alright? And if I'm gonna be sitting in a car with you, screamin' down the road, I'd rather it be red, 'cause you're sexiest in red. That is, when you're wearing anything at all because we both know that, ya know, you look hottest when you're naked."

She pursed her lips for a minute and then said, "So, you're telling me that the red is just a color preference? There's no grand hidden agenda behind it that we've spent two and a half days bickering over? It's just because you want a car that isn't the same color as the Sequoia?"

Booth rolled his eyes and breathed a quiet sigh. "Hey," he said, his voice warm and low as he tried to speak in as comforting a tone as he could muster. "I don't do subtle, Bren. Never have. Probably never will. And you know that, lass. So yes, it's about the car color. Red is a hot car color. I always thought, if I'd ever owned a sports car, I wanted it in red. Just like the crazy-fast '71 Chevelle SS I had when I was in high school. It's a color thing, Bones. No hidden meaning. Totally shallow on my end— promise."

Brennan leaned her head to one side and gave him an appraising look, her eyes narrowing slightly as she considered Booth's words. He let go of the breath he'd been holding, greatly relieved at having finally managed to defuse her anger. A smile curved the corners of his lips as he watched her, then began to turn around to walk back towards the kitchen to retrieve the beer he was opening when she came into the apartment a few minutes earlier. Yanking open the refrigerator door, he reached in and pulled out the bottle, tucking the Phillies bottle opener under the lip of the bottlecap as he glanced back over at her only to see her thoughtful expression had hardened again as she scowled back at him.

_Oh fuck, _he thought as he set both the beer and the bottle opener on the counter with an exasperated sigh. _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

"Then," Brennan began, her voice carefully measured as she looked back at him. "If it's just a preference—and since color is just a preference, but not _that _big a deal—then if I told you that a black Viper was parked in the garage downstairs, you should have no problem if we went down there right now, and I wanted you to fuck me against the car, correct?" she blinked at him.

"What?" Booth gasped, his mouth suddenly dry as he wasn't sure whether to be turned on or frightened by the distinctly predatory glint in her eyes.

His mouth fell open as another memory flashed before his eyes.

_Her hands migrated to the waistband of his pants, and she quickly unfastened his black leather belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers, then slid her fingers in between the waistband and his jersey-knit boxers. "So impatient," he muttered with a grin, gritting his teeth as she pulled his trousers down over his narrow, bony hips._

_"You don't want patience, sweetness," she laughed. "And I sure as hell don't, either."_

_His only reply was a low grunt as she tugged his boxer shorts off, grazing his swollen arousal in the process and soliciting a sharp hiss from him as she jerked his boxers over his hips and shoved them down below his knees. She gently pushed him away, which confused him for a moment before she reached under her skirt and slid off her panties, shimmying them down her legs before stepping out of them, leaving them just laying there on the concrete floor of the garage as she brought her eyes back up to meet his._

Booth cleared his throat, wincing a little at the jerking sensation deep in his groin as his balls hitched at the thought when he recalled the incident which Brennan was referencing. Even from the kitchen, he could feel the waves of aggression rolling off of her, and while his body responded to that aggression the same way it had for a century and a half, he heard a murmur in the back of his mind as his eyes skimmed from her bright flickering eyes down to the soft, round curve of her pregnant belly. "Uhh, I mean, no," he stuttered. "I mean, uhhh...I guess, that is, I don't think that I'd have no problem with that. But you want me...to fuck you against a car? Like now?" He cleared his throat again and shifted his weight from one hip to the other again. "I mean, in the garage downstairs? Right now?"

He pushed himself away from the counter, trying desperately to ignore the ache between his legs as the delicious memory spilled into his consciousness.

_"Huh," he grunted, lifting up the hem of her skirt with one hand and fisting himself in the other, giving himself a couple of slow, hard tugs as he gazed into her eyes. "Damn, I've missed you," he sighed as he leaned in and, drawing the fingers of his left hand over her cleft, parting it just enough to feel how wet she was, nudged her legs open wider with his forearm before pressing into her with a long, low sigh._

_"God, Angel," she moaned as she felt him open her up from the inside. She sucked in a sharp breath as he filled her, gently at first before closing the last bit of distance with a hard thrust. "God, you feel good..."_

Booth felt his cheeks flush at the thought of taking her that way, and he swore he could feel the dissonant voices warring inside of him—one, lustful and horny beyond words after weeks without being inside of her, tugging at that place low in his gut where he could feel his body hunger for her, and the other, private and protective, reluctant to risk the watchful eyes of gossipy neighbors or to do anything that might hurt her, knowing full well the toll that her unexpected pregnancy was taking on her body—as he tried to figure out if she was actually seriously proposing to have sex in the community garage or if she was just baiting him. "I don't know, Bren," he said hesitantly. "In the garage?"

Her voice becoming sharp again, Brennan asked, "So you don't want to fuck me, Booth?"

Coming to his senses, Booth rubbed his lightly stubbled jaw with the palm of his hand, then shook his head. "No," he blurted out quickly. "I mean, it's not that...you know, umm...I mean, I would just be afraid that...well, I mean, what if someone, you know, saw us?" He fell silent for a minute, the narrowing of his glazed-over eyes the only outward sign that his thoughts had raced ahead and embraced the idea of her leaning into the side of the sports car as he stroked into her from behind and the sound of her peaking moans echoed between the concrete walls of the underground garage. After a second, he blinked away the haze from his eyes and licked his lip, taking a sharp breath and clearing his throat as he thought about her round, pregnant belly squashed against the tinted window and her forearms twitching as she struggled to keep from being crushed against the car by his rapidly-deepening thrusts. _God, _he thought. _There's no way I'd...I mean, I want to...and maybe if she wasn't pregnant, yeah. Maybe. Because she's so fucking hot, and I'm so fucking hard up it's not even funny. But now...her and me like that? I can't...we can't... _He shook his head and said, "I dunno, Bones. You pressed up against the side of the car and me...since you're pregnant, and all, so I don't know, umm...I just don't know if it's the right thing, considering how far along you are and..."

"You just said that you can never get enough of me," Brennan said, beginning to tap her foot as her own ire flashed again. "You just said that you'd 'make a go' at me any time. If those statements are factual, and you aren't being disingenuous, then it shouldn't matter what time it is, if someone sees us, or if I'm fucking pregnant!"

"Bren, uhh..." Booth's brow creased as looked at her in desperate disbelief. The color had drained from his previously flushed cheeks at hearing the hurt in her voice, and his heart raced as he struggled to find a way to explain himself and reassure her. "It's not that I don't want you," he said pleadingly."I'm, uhh, just not sure what the building superintendent would think about me taking my six-months pregnant wife up against a car in the community garage, you know." Seeing the anger burning in her blue eyes, he hastily added, "You know I want you morning, noon and night, lass—right?"

"Except apparently, for the last twenty-six days...or _now_," she said. She pursed her lips into a thin line as she shook her head sharply. "I'm so fucking over this. Maybe my OB was right, and I should just get my vibrator out and make myself come since you so obviously don't want to help me with what I guess is something that you find too demanding and unpalatable a task to assist me in satisfying—"

"What?"

Booth frowned at hearing the reference to her vibrator, which he'd caught a glimpse of one night as she was retrieving a booklight out of her bedside table a few weeks after the night they first made love on Halloween. Ever since then, he'd swore to himself that he'd make sure the battery-operated appliance stayed in that drawer collecting dust if he had anything to do with it. His dark brows knit hard over his eyes as her words cut him to the quick.

"You really don't mean that, lass," he said, taking a couple of steps towards her as he reached for her arm. "You know I can do better for you than any vibrator can. I've always been able to do better for you than anyone or anything else—you know that." He licked his lips self-consciously and raised his eyebrows in a plaintive look. "Bren, I want you so much," he said. "You _know _I want you. I want you so bad, I'm halfway outta my mind, lass. I've been goin' kinda crazy the last few weeks thinking you didn't want, you know, to do it. I want you like crazy, alright? But I don't really think we should just go fuck downstairs in the garage, you know. Wolfram and Hart was different. I was...nobody could say boo to me about what I did in that garage. I was king, you know. But...why are we arguing about this? You know I want you, Bren. I haven't been able to get enough of you for a hundred and fifty years. It's just that—"

"You resent losing that, don't you?" she asked suddenly, nodding at him. "You do, I know you do. And, you blame me. If it weren't for me, you'd still be there and still be 'king.'"

"No!" he grunted, grabbing her arm as the twinge of confusion flared into frustration. "No, that's fucking bullshit, Bren, and you know it."

Booth gritted his teeth and growled as her words echoed in his ears. It had taken him months of soul-searching to work his way through the deluge of memories that swamped him that Halloween night, and to emerge on the other side of it to a place where he could be at peace, as much as was possible, with who he'd been and what he had done over the 280 years since he was born into an affluent Galway merchant family. It galled him to hear her suggest that he cultivated some sort of secret nostalgia for the life he used to live.

"You know what, Bren," he snapped. "Maybe the merry-go-round of wacky hormones has got you dizzy or something, but in case you're wondering, I don't miss that life. I _don't_, alright? And I don't blame you for anything. You saved me. Twice. I _love _you for that. You know that. You _know _that." He stopped and sighed, propping his hands on his hips as he pursed his lips together and gave her a serious look. "The past is the past, Bren. I don't want any of it back. I only want you. You, and this little one of ours, okay? That's what I want. Right here and now. Not the past. I don't want any of it. I love you and what we have, here and now. That's it, alright?" He paused, taking a breath. "What happened today, Bren? What's got you all riled up like this? This isn't about the color of a damn sports car. Come on, lass. What's going on?"

She stared at him for a minute, and then asked in a very measured voice, "If the baby is a girl, and I want to name her Kathryn, are you going to fight me on it?"

"Bren," he sighed. "Come on. Please. Take pity on me. Just tell me what happened today, and we can play Twenty Questions until your heart's content, okay? What does the baby's name have to do with anything about anything?"

Tilting her head, Brennan said, "It has to do with _everything_, Booth. And, if you just answer the damn question, I'll answer yours, okay?"

Booth sighed, his lip curling a little as his forehead creased again in confusion. He shook his head, puzzled by yet another unexpected shift from one seemingly random topic to another. _For fuck's sake—this is like pregnant Bren Mad Libs, _he told himself, looking away for a moment before he answered. _Goddamn it. I was never any good at it when it was just Parker and his fill-in-the-blanks one about the trip to the pet store. How the fuck am I supposed to even compete when it's Bones doing a riff on "This is Your Life?" Fuck._

"You want to name a little girl after my sister?" He asked. "My sister who..." He swallowed hard and couldn't bring himself to say the word—to give a name to what he'd done to his own family after Darla turned him into a vampire—as he felt a familiar feeling of bile rise at the back of his throat as a reflexive wave of guilt washed over him. "My sister," he tried again. "Who died over two hundred fifty years ago?" He cocked his head and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand before he saw her nod slowly. "I guess, if it really means that much to you, and you want to do that, then yeah. Fine. I mean, I don't know _why _you'd want to do that, but if it's that important to you, well...sure." He stopped and then asked, "Okay, so there's my answer, Bren. Now, your turn. What in the fuck is going on?"

"And, if it's a boy," Brennan pressed relentlessly, ignoring his question. "And, if I want to name him Liam, you're telling me you'd be okay with that, too?"

Booth winced and drew a sharp breath of surprise, then let go of her arm and took a couple of steps back before turning away. He felt a sickening swirl of emotion in his belly, even more intense than the one that had washed over him just moments before, as he stood there for a minute in stunned clenched his fists and shook his head as he muttered something inaudible under his breath. "Look," he said, turning to face her again after a few moments of strained silence that had grown exponentially between the pair. "I don't expect you to understand this, Bren, but God, I hope you do, okay? A son of ours deserves to be named after someone other than me."

He spoke with a certain glumness in his voice that hadn't been there before. He remembered the disappointment he'd felt when he awoke one morning, a day or two after Halloween, and realized that for all the hard work he'd done going through the Gamblers Anonymous twelve-step program to deal with his addiction in the years following his discharge from the Army, he now had an entirely new history of gambling, hard drinking and bar-brawling to contend with, one that had persisted for centuries.

"I don't want him named for the libertine I used to be when I lived in Galway and was a terror in my father's house," he said grimly, "nor for the thing I became when I was turned. Or even for the man I was when you came upon me in Chicago, Bren. Our son deserves his _own_ name, a name that's clean and honorable. A new name, untouched and untainted by any of his father's sins. He should have a clean slate beginning with having a name of his very own. So, no, I _wouldn't _be okay with you wanting to name the baby Liam if it was a boy, okay? Because nothing good ever came from my time as Liam. _Nothing_. You of all people should know that. The past is the past, Bren. It's done and over. There's no good reason to hold onto stuff with that much baggage. It's too complicated, too ugly. Sometimes it's just better to leave it all behind, forget about it and move forward."

Brennan waited after he'd finished speaking and was about to speak when she sucked in a sharp breath as felt the baby kick her kidney. The pain made her wince and she felt a sinking feeling as she realized that, if he left her, she wouldn't be the only one he'd be leaving behind. The physical discomfort she felt in her lower back faded after a few moments, but a dark foreboding lingered in its wake as she took several deep breaths, exhaling slowly as she shook her head before she finally responded. "Well, that explains that, then, doesn't it?" she asked with another sigh. "I don't know why I ever really expected anything different from you. Soul or no soul, human or vampire, Angeleus or Angel or Booth—you've been remarkably consistent in some things."

Booth blinked and shook his head, then stared at her. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked. Moderating his tone, he sighed and said, "I don't know what you're saying here, Bren. Are you trying to say I've been _hiding _something from you? Enough with the mindgames, okay? What exactly are you trying to tell me here?"

"I mean," Brennan quickly replied, noting the new tone of Booth's voice that confirmed, to her, that she had struck a nerve—something that made her quite happy because she was beginning to tire of Booth being all calm and unaffected when really, she believed, all of this was his fault. "One of the things that's always pissed me off about you is since you got a soul—vampire or human—you've never been consistent. Ironic that, as Angelus, your were beautifully consistent in your inconsistence, but after he was gone, not so much. Since then, you've always liked to pick and choose which parts of the past are acceptable and which aren't. Some stay hidden in the dark, others get trotted out on special occasions, while others are swept away under the rug and never looked at again, never to see the light of day again, because you get twitchy about anything that became a part of your life when you were evil."

She looked him straight in the eyes as she continued speaking. His deep-set brown eyes glimmered with an emotion she couldn't quite read but she guessed was some variant of sad confusion, but she saw something else in the way his dark brows hung low over those eyes, almost as if he were bracing himself for an assault, that emboldened her.

"Sure," she said casually. "Jameson's whiskey and Irish tea and Claddagh rings are okay when you're feeling nostalgic as the mood suits you, but other stuff? Family names, other traditions, and anything related to your past as Angelus are just...what? To be forgotten? Because they've fallen out of favor? Because they aren't worthy? Because they're not worth remembering because you're too embarrassed, too ashamed?"

"Wait, what?" he huffed, looking around the room in an exaggerated way. "At what point did we go off the rails here, woman? Because I don't have a clue what you're talking about. Can we just go back to the part of this conversation where you were still sort of making sense, because you've totally lost me. I mean, I really don't—"

Brennan shook her head and cut him off, in a full-raged tear. "Tell me, Booth," she continued. "How does that work? Do you even think about who and what you cut out of your life? What parts you can accept and what you are going to reject? Is it something you do unconsciously out of habit, or do you really have to think about it? And, if you do think about it, are they random choices, or do you rotate them out as the fancy strikes you? Because if it is random—and I suspect it's either got to be that or habit by now after so many years—then it'd be nice to know when you're going to decide to rotate me out of your cycle since I'm even older than most of the other things and people you've already turned your back on."

"God damn it, Bren," Booth shouted, at her as his face reddened from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. "What the _fuck _are you talking about? I-I...what the hell are you—?" He watched her nostrils flaring in anger and her words rang in his ears. "I don't get it. I am totally and utterly fucking lost. I mean, Claddagh rings?"

Booth shook his head, wracking his mind trying to remember the last time he'd ever seen a Claddagh ring. He looked up, staring up at the knockdown texture of the loft's ceiling, as if the answer were to be found inscribed there. Then he remembered a rainy night in Sunnydale years before when he gave a silver Claddagh ring to the young Slayer he'd loved then. The unwelcome memory struck him like a thunderbolt, making his heart skip a beat as a dark wave of regret rolled through his gut and the first jagged pieces of understanding finally began to slowly fall into place.

_Because they've fallen out of favor?_

_Because they aren't worthy?_

_Because they're not worth remembering?_

He looked at her and blinked, noting the way her own cheeks and ears were flushed red with anger, her blue eyes gleaming as she waited for his response. _This doesn't make any sense, _he told himself, narrowing his eyes as he watched her. _What the fuck?_

"I don't understand what you're talking about," he muttered as he turned away again. He growled under his breath, his hands forming fists again as he tried to tamp down his growing frustration. "I'm obviously missing something here. So you've gotta break this down for me, Bren," he said, turning around once more. "Use tiny words, because my dumb-ass brain isn't getting the message here. What do you mean?"

Lifting up her left hand, she turned it so that he could see the sapphire of her wedding band staring back at him. "Answer one more question for me and then I will."

Booth craned his head back, staring up at the ceiling before he closed his eyes and sighed loudly. "Fine," he grumbled, bringing his gaze back to meet hers. "What?"

"When we got married," Brennan began, "you promised to give me a ring that symbolizes how you felt about me...about how much you loved me. A month later, you gave me this. What I want to know is, why did you give me _this _ring? Not the sapphire, mind you. I know that you chose the sapphire because that's always been my favorite stone and because you say it reminds you of the color of my eyes. I also know the reason why you chose to get the ring made of silver since you know that metal has some significance for me. I understand why you made both of those choices. But why the Celtic knot motif? I'd like you to tell me _why _you made that choice. Can you explain that to me, please? " She stared at him expectantly once she'd asked her question.

"Bren," he groaned, closing his eyes as if in so doing he could slow down the twisty rollercoaster of her moody logic. He took a breath, held it for a moment, then slowly let it out of his nose, using one of the old calming techniques he'd learned at the U.S. Army Sniper School to control his mounting frustration and keep from getting off track. "I've always liked the scroll work," he explained simply. "I thought it was pretty and...well, I just like it. But you know that."

Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, Brennan nodded. "Yes," she confirmed. "I do know that, Booth. I do know that you like it. But, what I wanted to know is _why_ you like it enough that you chose it for the design for my wedding ring."

Running his hand through his hair, Booth sighed. "Well, I-I...I picked that because the Celtic knot symbolizes the eternity of a tight bond. It has no beginning, and no end. It's endless. You and me, Bren—_we're _that way. I mean, I'm not endless in the conventional sense, not now that I have my humanity, but what we have between the two of us, it _is_ endless. This thing between us—that which connects us—it's more than just a commitment. It's bigger than that. It goes on, even after I'm no more. It's eternal. It always was. It always is. Always will be." He paused for a beat and then shrugged his shoulders as he said, "And, sure, because the man I am today, in part, is a man who was born in Ireland, then yeah. I'd be lying if I didn't make that choice because there's a certain resonance to it that I really like a lot."

His brow furrowed again, drawing low over his eyes as he saw something flicker in her skeptical blue eyes.

"But, I don't understand, Bren," he said, his low voice taking on a hard edge to it. "I mean, what the fuck? Are you doubting...what? Me? Us? Are you questioning my faithfulness here?" His jaw shifted from one side to the other as he hesitated. "Do you think I've been unfaithful to you? Huh? Is that what this is about?" He felt his breaths rising and falling more heavily as he anguished at the mere suggestion of infidelity. "I don't know what the fuck would ever put that ditty in your head, but I need to know. Whatever this is...what the hell is going on? _Tell me_."

"Rings are exchanged among the people of Galway as a sign of devotion, isn't that correct?" Brennan asked him, somewhat unfairly ignoring his question. "Friendship, loyalty, and love, right?"

Booth winced at hearing her say the name of his birthplace, the two syllables stabbing him deeply as he realized that by mentioning a place he'd left two hundred years before—and that he'd made an effort to avoid returning to whenever possible ever since—whatever it was that was gnawing at her was less about them and more about _him_. Blinking away the pain her words and biting tone had caused him, henarrowed his eyes as he tried to discern the hidden subtext of what she was saying. "Yeah," he answered cautiously. "It does."

Pursing her lips, Brennan asked, "Then why didn't you give me one of those instead? Don't you feel those things for me? Friendship, loyalty, and love?"

Shaking his head, Booth let out a frustrated grunt. "Jesus, Bren," he sighed. "You know I do."

She bit her lip for a minute and then said, "I know you do, I just—" Her voice trailed off as she looked away from him for a minute, took another breath, and then continued. "I just need to know why you didn't give me one, okay? So, can you tell me? Please?"

Booth swallowed hard, unable to shake the sense that he was fighting a losing battle and that, no matter what he said, it would inevitably be the wrong thing. He grimaced and shrugged, knowing he was in too deep to back out of the conversation now "I didn't give you a Claddagh ring because what we have is _more_ than what's symbolized by a Claddagh," he said. "So much more, Bren. And I think you know that." He stopped and waited for a moment before he asked, somewhat hesitantly, "Don't you?"

Brennan looked away briefly, nibbling the inside of her lip as she shifted her weight from one hip to the other. After a few seconds, she brought her gaze up again to meet his. "Yes," she eventually answered, even as she heard him let out a sigh of relief. "I do know that, Booth."

"Then, why are you doubting this now?" he suddenly asked. "Why, out of the blue, are you now questioning …" His voice trailed off as the very concept of her doubting his faithfulness made the bile rise in the back of his throat. "I mean, Bren, this is stuff I thought we'd settled months ago, if not longer?"

She shook her head, reddening a bit at his sharp tone as she replied, "So did I. Until I realized that you didn't give me that ring...the ring that what—how does it go? 'Lets others know that the wearer belongs to someone?' And you gave me something else. So, I'm sorry, Booth. But, in light of that revelation, so sue me if I'm questioning some prior assessments I've made, namely the most important one that you married me, taking vows before God, and yet I wasn't good enough to give that type of ring to, was I?"

Booth's brows knit low and hard over his smoldering eyes. "Bren," he said, his voice deep and even as he said her name. "Look—I didn't give you a Claddagh because what we have is _more _than what the Claddagh symbolizes. The meaning of the ring I gave you says what we have, what we are to each other, is forever. And, yes, people see that ring on your left hand, and they know you belong to someone. It's a wedding band. In all of those anthropological ways that you can get all squinty about, that ring marks you as 'taken,' more than a mere Claddagh ring would. I mean, look...if you want a Claddagh ring, lass—if that's what you really want—then fine, let's get you one. We can go right now. I'll have one of those on your finger so fast, it'll make your head spin. But I don't think that's what this is really about. I think..." He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair with a sigh as his voice trailed off. "What's going on, Bren? Why are we—?"

Cutting him off once again, Brennan snapped, "Well, excuse me, but maybe I'm not feeling like putting much fucking stock in anthropology right now," she said. "You know, it's not as much about giving me a Claddagh ring, but rather about who else you've given such a ring to, isn't it, Booth?" Shaking her head, she bit her lip and then turned from him. "Enough. I've had enough of this."

Booth stood there watching her simmer in her own anger when, suddenly, recognition flickered in his mind. _The Claddagh. She's obsessing about the Claddagh and the past. That...no...fuck. _He looked down at his feet and sighed even as he knew he was right since that was the only thing it could be. _It has to be. There's only one...there's only one person that could be bringing this kind of thing out of her now. _He thought about the women whom he'd loved in the past. _It can't be Darla, _he thought. _I never gave her any jewelry like that. Besides, Bren was her friend, and even if she wasn't, she's gone, and Bren knows that. Cordelia, too. She's gone, and Bren knows all about that. So... _He took a deep breath as the answer loomed large before him, and he looked up, his heart aching as he saw the fury that glimmered in Brennan's eyes. _It could only be..._

_Oh fuck, _he muttered silently. _For fuck's sake, if my extended techno-dance remix memory is jiving like I think it is, haven't we been through this nine zillion times before? _Booth sighed. _If only I'd have pulled my head out of my stupid ass a bit quicker, I would've seen what this was about a lot fuckin' sooner_. _Just...aww, shit._

Growling at his own denseness, he shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair with a sigh."I married _you_, Bren," he said, looking her straight in the eye and purposely holding her gaze as he did so. "_You're _the only woman I've ever dreamed of giving my life to. Ever. Just you, lass. And more importantly, you know that." He took a step closer, never breaking his gaze as he looked deep into her eyes and he repeated, "You _know _that."

Brennan blinked and looked away, her gaze falling to rest on her bare feet as she shook her head, then raised her head again and met his eyes once more with a heavy-lidded look that Booth recognized as her not-yet-convinced expression of reserved judgment.

"You _know _that, right?" he asked her, this time phrasing what had just been a certain statement of fact in his mind a few seconds earlier as a question. "Right?"

Brennan pouted her lips for a moment then, after a few more seconds of reflection, offered a small, if still tentative nod.

"Good," he said with a sigh of relief before he looked back up at her. "That's good. Because I also know you know that I love you more than anything else in this world." Hearing not a murmur from her in response, he continued insistently, growing more confident the more he talked. "I know you know that. But what I don't know is why you're all of a sudden doubting all of that, after all this time? After all we've been through, you and me, together. Why am I suddenly feeling like we're right back to where we were before Halloween, Bren? Tell me. Please." He raised his eyebrows expectantly and pursed his lips into an almost sad pout as he silently begged her to put him out of his misery. _Come on, Bren. Please. Let me in...just tell me_, he pleaded with her silently before he added, "What happened today?"

Brennan looked away, was quiet for a moment, and then spoke in a softer tone of voice. "I don't doubt that you love me, Booth," Brennan sighed. "But I do know that you've loved a lot of people—both human, vampire, and a bunch of other types in between, no matter whether you were Angel or Booth...or, it's just—" she stopped and then shook her head again as she felt her voice choke up a bit at the mere thought of the Slayer. "I can't do this right now," she said. "I can't...that is, I need to be—I'm done talking about this now."

"But _I'm _not," Booth said firmly. He gritted his teeth, knowing that he had to proceed very, very carefully given the volatility of her mood, but recognizing that he had no choice but to move forward, pushing her to uncover the truth underlying her anger, especially because he finally knew the root of her anger and hurt and knew that, however it came to surface on this particular day, his past relationship with the Slayer struck a raw nerve with Brennan. As much as he might've wanted to, he knew he had to do this—he couldn't let this go, or let the situation, and her response to it, fester for a minute longer than necessary, because it would keep Brennan simmering in corrosive anger until it finally boiled over into a violent, ugly fight the very thought of which made him ill to think about. "You can't throw this kind of thing out there and expect me to let you let this go."

He placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath, then leveled a critical eye at her, letting his gaze settle indistinctly over her at first, then narrowing his focus the same way he would when aiming at at target on the shooting range right before he put a bullet in the middle of the target's heart. "It's Buffy," he said. "Isn't it? She's the only one that could get you _this _worked up, the only one that's ever had _this _much of an effect on you. You've never cared about the others. The others are...Rebecca and I never were...anything...and Darla—she's gone. You were never threatened by her anyway."

Booth hesitated, then thought about the other woman of significance who had passed through his life in the years he spent living in Los Angeles after his flight from Sunnydale: a woman so different from Brennan in so many ways, but yet in some ways—her self-confidence and belief in her own exceptionalism, her snarky sense of humor and her acute sense of fashion—not so unlike her that the two, who'd never met actually, would've found enough common ground between them to enjoy each other's company, if only for a short while, unless they ripped each other's throats out because they were just a bit too similar for their own good even if, he noted grimly, the elder of the two women was loyal enough to him that she was willing to sacrifice her own happiness for his, while the younger had betrayed him on more than one painful occasion.

"And Cordelia," he added. "But she's gone, too. You know that.. This is about Buffy, isn't it?"

Her eyes flashed at his words and the name he spoke. For a split second, she literally saw the same misty red haze in her eyes as she had at the coffee cart right before she'd accidentally unleashed a powerful wave of magic at the Slayer, then felt her knees buckle slightly as the memory of how she'd unintentionally, if definitely because she'd been duly provoked, struck out at the Slayer. At the time, she had hardly noticed the cost, fueled as she was by anger, indignation, fear, disgust, and adrenaline. She opened her mouth to say something to Booth about why she looked a bit more woozy than normal, but then realized that if she'd done that, she would have to discuss the Slayer with him. Definitely certain that was the absolute _last _thing she wanted to do, she promptly shut her mouth. Brennan blinked several times, puffs of air causing her nostrils to flare as her nose tinged a warm pink. She then gritted her teeth as she looked away from him for a long moment and then and repeated, "I said I was done talking about this, and I meant it, Booth."

"You know I love you, Bren," he said, his voice wavering on the narrow edge between exasperation and sadness at the prospect of having to rehash an argument that the two of them had had what seemed to him to have been countless times over the years, but not once since Booth left had behind his vampire past and been cleaved to a new human life in D.C. "Only you. It's only you. You're the only one I love, okay, and the only one I want, _ever. _God, Bren, you know that. You're everything to me. _Everything. _What happened before? It's history. Buffy is in the past. What we had, what she betrayed, it's gone. Over. Done. Finished. You know that, Bren. You've known that for years. So why is it different now? Today? What happened today to churn all this up?"

"Fine," Brennan muttered. "I can see that obviously you're being typically pernicious about this. So, if you want to keep talking about things, fine. But, you'll be doing it by yourself because I'm not going to stay here and listen to it." Shaking her head, she turned to walk past him and in the direction of their bedroom.

Booth's jaw hardened as she moved away and he followed her, closing this distance between them quickly with his long strides and heavy footfalls. "Oh, is this how it's gonna be, Bren?" he chuffed through gritted teeth. "So now you get to decide when we're done talking, huh? I thought you agreed we were all done with the unilateral shit, remember? We said no more of either one of us getting to make the calls for the other without talking it through. I guess you pulled the plug on that little idea, huh, since it's all about you and what you want, yeah? Well, you know what? That's not the deal, Bren. That's not the deal that you made with me, and I'm calling you on it."

When he reached out and grabbed her arm, Brennan's eyes swiveled towards him with a piercing stare.

"I'm only going to say this once, Booth," she growled. "It would be advisable for you to _let...me...go_."

"No," he grunted, unwilling to release her arm from his tight grasp even as he tightened his grip on her arm. "You can't just walk away, Bren. That whole walking away/running away thing? It's off the fucking table, okay? We're married. Whatever the fuck the problem is, we better deal with it."

Booth's anger smoldered in his eyes as he peered out from beneath his deeply-knit, low-set brow and he gritted his teeth as a sigh rumbled in the back of his throat and emerged as a quiet growl. He was so blinded by the thick red haze of his own anger that it took him a minute to see the bright flash in her eyes and the faintly crackling aura that clung to the outline of her rigidly tense body as she glared back at him. He acknowledged her angry gaze with a huff, shaking his head as another growl rumbled in the back of his throat.

"We _are _going to deal with it, Bren," he insisted, his voice rough as he looked at her. "And you know why? Because you and me, and that baby of ours, we're in it, together, for keeps. Claddagh ring or no, we're for fucking keeps, okay, which means you best stop it with this 50s'-style quiz show guessing game shit and tell me what's really fuckin' goin' on, alright? Because otherwise, it's gonna be a long fucking night."

_I've had enough of this_, a sharp voice echoed in Brennan's mind. _I'm so tired of everyone telling me about my life and then thinking that they're not only right, but it gives them some lease on telling me what to do. I-I...I wanted to fight before, but now...I just want out. I want...I'm done. I'm just...done._

Brennan wrenched her arm free of him with a grunt, and stumbled backwards away from him. "What's really fucking going on is that I'm done conversing with you, Booth? I have absolutely _nothing _else to say to you right now. So, here's what's going to happen. You want to talk about making a unilateral decision? Then here's one. You're going to stay _exactly _where you are, not moving so much as a millimeter of muscle fiber as you watch me walk by you without lifting so much as a fucking eyebrow in my general direction. And, then maybe,_ just maybe_...if you're _very_ lucky, I'll toss out a pillow and a spare blanket for you to use when you're trying to fall asleep on the goddamn couch tonight."

"Or what?" he growled, the dark smolder in his brown eyes suddenly blackening to pitch at hearing her issue ultimatum. He clenched his fists so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms and left small red crescents in the skin, and the muscle at the base of his jaw ticked once then twice as he leveled a glare at her that would have withered anyone else but her.

"What? You can't do better than banish me to the couch, Bren?" He propped his hands on his hips and licked his lips as he felt his muscles twitch in anticipation of a fight the likes of which he hadn't had with her in half a decade or more. He felt the anger bubbling up from a place of darkness deep down inside of him where it swirled with a sardonic humor that gave the fight itself a sporting aspect to it. He felt a tingle in the hinges of his jaw as he remembered how several such fights ended—with his fangs sunk deep into the ivory flesh of her throat as he rammed himself balls-deep into her—and he wondered how such a fight would end now that he could no longer offer her the curiously erotic satisfaction of being simultaneously fucked and sucked. Rolling his jaw to the side to shrug away the sensation, he barked out a dark chuckle. "Come on. I _know _you can do better than that so tell me what you'll really do, huh? Maybe you'll tie me up. You always liked doing that—"

"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" she glared at him with a loud guffaw before she shook her head and smirked. "Dumb fucking fat luck of _that _happening."

"That was always _your_ thing, lass, not mine," he snickered with a small shake of his head. "But it doesn't really matter anyway. Because, nawww, you're not gonna string me up like a freshly-killed stag again. Nope." He shook his head and gave her a smirk. "Don't tell me you've been saving up your holy water and crucifixes to burn and brand me like you did that dumb cunt Helen? 'Cause I hate to break it to you, Bren, but that shit doesn't work on me anymore. You know, just FYI." He paused and smirked, then chuckled, snapping his fingers as he looked up at her and said, "Oh, wait. I got it. Maybe you're finally gonna teach me a lesson, huh? Work some of that mojo of yours maybe? Ha!" He laughed as he stared at her.

Brennan's eyes widened in clear surprise at his question before they narrowed to near slits. "If I wanted to curse you, Booth, you wouldn't be standing here right now. It would've already happened. You never even would've seen it coming no matter how good your think your sniper-honed sense of detection is."

Shaking his head, Booth said, "Yeah. You probably do think that the only way you'd get one over on me is if you surprised me, huh? Well, just to let you know, I usually only fall for the same trick once, Bren. So you're gonna have to come up with something else if you're gonna try to take a few pages out of Buffy's playbook, mmm? Are you gonna try to stake me? Huh?"He licked his lips again, trying to taunt her and draw her out of her silence because he was desperate to break through her wall and finally engage in an open discussion without any more guessing games or rounds of Twenty Questions where he always ended up on the losing side. "Or maybe you're gonna cut another deal with the Prince of Darkness and send me back to hell to be tortured for another century? Because either way, I'll do what I've always done, and deal. So give me your best fucking shot, huh, Bren? What'll it be?"

In her mind, Brennan heard a rather shrill bellow that she yelled before she saw a flash of red, realized she was still holding her heels in her hand, moved one to her right hand, took aim at Booth, and threw it at him as hard as she could. In reality, she reacted so quickly that the only sound that was actually heard was the soft grunt he made when the spiked heel that she'd thrown hit him directly on the shoulder, leaving a black indentation scuff mark on the soft French blue of the collared Oxford dress shirt he was still wearing once he'd gotten home from work.

"Fuck, Bren!" he growled, reaching for his shoulder and rubbing where she'd hit him. His eyes narrowed as he remembered the last time she'd thrown something at him in anger.

_"Two hours," she suddenly gestured with her fingers. "I've been sitting here for over two hours...all by myself...waiting for you." She stopped and then reached to the side of the bed. She grabbed a rectangular piece of black plastic and threw it at him as hard as she could._

_Angel didn't have to move too far to be able to move from the direction of what he saw was his own TV remote that she'd thrown at him as he heard it clatter to the wooden floor when it skated past him, and even as he concentrated on her anger, somewhere in the back of his male mind he hoped that she hadn't broken it._

"You've gone out of your fucking mind, woman," he snorted. "Is this what we're back to, lass? You getting all pissed and throwing things around like some kind of petulant goddamn child just because you get off on breaking my remote again?"

Spurred on by his grunt, which she knew had caused him some amount of pain, Brennan smirked as she quickly took aim with the second heel and had let it fly while he was still growling in compliant about the first projectile she'd lobbed at him. She refused to stop for even a split second to address his last taunts. She didn't even stop to wait to see the second heel hit him in the stomach, not as good a shot as the first one since the flat of her shoe hit him instead of the heel. Hoping to maintain her momentum, spinning around, her eyes darted around her bookshelves to see what other ammunition she could find. Hastily, she reached for a stack of academic journals that were within each reach with one hand and grabbed a scrimshawed horn seated in a wooden cradle with her other.

The flat front of the shoe's sole bounced harmlessly off Booth's stomach, and he was looking down and brushing his hand over his belly as he heard the sound of shuffling papers. He gritted his teeth and, closing the distance between them in three short strides, lunged at her just as she was picking up the scrimshawed horn that he himself had thrown in frustration some six months or more before on the night his memories had come flooding back to him.

Ducking away from him, she quickly re-aimed the horn at him as she muttered, "I'm _nothing _like her!" She followed the horn with a fast lob of three journals at his head in rapid succession. "I'm not a spoiled, silly, stupid child. I'm absolutely...nothing...fucking...like...her. Never was. And I never will be!"

Booth dodged the flying horn and easily ducked as he batted away the journals she'd flung at him. "I know you're not, God dammit," he shouted.

She turned and padded away from the bookshelves, and in the moment that she stepped away from the shelves, he lunged at her again, this time moving quickly enough and catching her in a fleeting bit of awkwardness that he thrust one arm and then the other against the wall, pinning her between them as she stood there, her back to the wall of their living room, her chest heaving and her pale eyes burning in fury.

"I know you're nothing like her," he said. "I _know _you're not." Her eyes stared back at him, glimmering with emotion as her mouth hung open, her jaw slightly askew as she seemed to be winding up for the next salvo of her verbal assault. Booth took a breath and cocked his head to the side as he lowered his voice to as measured a tone as he could summon in that moment and said, "I'm glad you're not, Bren."

"I'm _not _her," Brennan repeated breathlessly, her raw voice still raspy and sharp with inflamed anger. "I'm nothing like her. _Nothing_."

Nodding, Booth quickly assured her. "I know that," he told her hurriedly. "I know that you're not like her, lass. I know _that_. You're _not_ her. You aren't. I know that. I swear I know that."

He pressed against the wall, putting a good proportion of his two hundred pounds of body weight into his palms so that she would be unable to move him without the assistance of her powers. As he leaned into his hands, he could feel the soft bulk of her breasts and the firm feel of her pregnant belly pressing against his chest with each of her heaving breaths, and the heat of her body seemed to radiate off of her in waves and warm his skin through his shirt. "Bren," he whispered, cocking his head to one side as he gazed into her eyes, trying to soften his expression as if by so doing he could soften her anger. "Listen," he said pleadingly.

"No," she said with a sharp shake of her head, her brow furrowed as she turned her body slightly, seemingly oblivious in her anger to his attempt to physical contain her. "I've done more than my fucking share of listening today. I'm done. Now, let me go, Booth. I'm serious. Don't make me—"

Booth took a deep breath. "Nope," he said firmly, splaying his large hands against the wall. "I'm not letting you go. That's the fucking point, alright? Get it? I'm not letting you go. _Ever_, alright? Not now. Not today. Not ever, Bren. I'm not walking away. You're not walking away. I'm never letting you go. We're in this together, remember? 'To have and to hold 'til death do us part,' hmm? We added that bit to the vows about us being 'one soul, woven together and indivisible,' remember? Don't try to deny it. I know that squinty memory of yours would never forget something like that even on a bad day. So, I know you remember. It's now and forever—just you and me, lass." He leaned into her, pressing her solidly against the wall with his hip as he moved in so close that their faces were just inches apart. "I love you, Bren, and I'm not letting you go. We're done with that, remember? Neither one of us is walking away. Not this time. Not ever again."

"You're a fool," she huffed at him. "You're a fool if you've forgotten what I am or what I can do if I'm pushed hard enough. And, you know what, Booth? I've been pushed just about as hard and as far as I can go today without snapping. So, if you think you're safe just because I haven't used my powers before today since the night I got us from the lab to here, you're nothing but a damn fool."

"Maybe I am," he muttered as he leaned in, closing the last couple of inches that separated them before he pressed his lips against hers.

* * *

**-tbc-**

* * *

**A/N2**: So, there we have it.

What did everyone think? That flashback with Angelus and Brennan was a _long _time in the making. But, it certainly puts a different spin on some issues we've touched on before, huh-like why Bren was always so difficult about Angel getting anywhere near her mouth? ::evil grin::

Anyway, only one part remains in this story. Obviously, you know what comes next. Booth and Brennan decide to settle down and discuss things in an amicable manner before they sit down to share a steaming pot of Irish Breakfast tea, a plate of blueberry scones, and catch up on back episodes of _Downton Abbey. _::pause:: Okay, maybe that's not _quite _what happens. But, by way of preview, Irish Breakfast Tea and said blueberry scones _do _make an appearance in our exciting conclusion. We'd be thrilled if you'd share with us your thoughts on this part as we prep that piece. Thanks for reading!~


	5. Part V: Finally Making Peace, Pt 1

**A Would-be Reunion**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

**A/N: **So, unlike the rest of the story, we're going to keep this short and sweet. Here it is, at long last. The epic conclusion to this series. Not surprisingly, this final piece of the puzzle ballooned in word count so much that we had to split it into two parts. Part I is posting now, and Part II will be posting shortly. We hope everyone A.) enjoys it and B.) thinks it was worth the wait. Now, on with the show.

**Unf Alert: **Yes, ladies and gents, we know you've been waiting for this. An Unf Alert is indeed being issued for this final part...although, since we had to split this monster into two parts, the really unf-inducing stuff is in part VI. So, we're teases, yes, we know. Sorry about that. ::grin::

* * *

**Part V: Finally Making Peace, Part I**

* * *

The kiss they shared was hard, greedy, and with a sharp edge that merely served to fuel Brennan's hostility as they entered into a familiar duel for the upper hand that they'd often fought with one another since their first encounter in 1860.

She sucked in air from her nose as she kept her lips pressed to his, even when she felt lightheaded and knew she needed to breathe. As she tried to suck in air, the only thing she succeeded in doing was inhaling a deep whiff of the mixed menthol/sandalwood scent that she'd firmly identified with him in her mind for so long that she couldn't remember a time when she didn't think of him when she came into contact with such smells.

Booth felt her struggling against his crushing kiss and, more so, against what he sensed were her own conflicting desires to break off the kiss and push him away, on the one hand, and to surrender herself to the kiss, on the other. He backed off just enough to allow a fraction of an inch of space between their faces as his tongue darted out and drew a wet line along the cleft between her slender lips, beckoning her to open her mouth to his deeper kiss.

She grunted at him when she felt him try to force his tongue between her lips and into her mouth. Grabbing a fistful of his dress shirt in each hand, she attempted to push him away as she moved her head away from his.

"Enough," she muttered. "Enough."

"It's never enough," he muttered as he leaned into her, some of the distance between his hips and hers taken up largely by the noticeably round, if still slight, swell of her pregnant belly. He pressed into her insistently, letting her feel the way she had aroused him—not just his anger, but his desire. "It's never enough, Bren. Never has been. Never will be. You know it, too..."

"No—" she snapped at him. "Not this time. That's not going to work. No."

"No?" he gasped as he struggled for breath. "Then tell me what will. Tell me what you want me to say, and I'll say it. Just tell me...what do you want me to tell you, huh?"

She swallowed once and then shook her head. "There's nothing you can tell me," she grunted. "There's nothing that you can say or do that will make me believe that."

"What?" he said between heaving breaths. "You don't believe I love you? You don't believe after all we've been through that you're everything to me?" He took a half-step back and propped his hands on his hips. "God, Bren—I _love _you, lass. With everything I am. You _know _that. Come on."

"You left me once," she let out in an agonized gasp. "You did, Booth. You left me before, and I know...I _know, _Booth. You'll do it again. Especially with the Mid-Life Crisis sniffing around you waiting to snap her bony little fingers because she thinks you'll come running again and swoop in out of the shadows when she can pencil you in for whatever fucking allegorical baking exchanges you two used to get off on." She stopped her mouth from turning into a twisted scowl as she said, "I may've gotten rid of her for now, but she'll be back." Her fine, slightly-upturned nose suddenly scrunched up as the intense feelings of hatred and disgust bubbled up from deep inside her gut and manifested itself as bile rising in the back of her throat. "She's like a fucking lingering fungal disease," she muttered in exasperation. "You think you've gotten rid of it, don't see any more symptoms manifest, and then it suddenly flares on a random day, and you're fucked all over again before you realize what's even happened." She shook her head again. "I can't deal with that. Not now. Not...I-I...I just can't."

Booth drew in a sharp breath that hitched in his throat as he felt his chest tighten painfully while the reality of her rant sank into the recesses of his mind. _Jesus, _he thought, his hip still pressed about the firm roundness of her abdomen as he found himself too stunned to even move. _After all this time...after fucking everything...now this? _He clenched his teeth and sighed, the sound a low rumble in the back of his throat. _After all this time, why? Why, just when my life was starting to really fall into place—me and Bones finally together with a baby on the way, us...our family...what I've always wanted—why does she have to wait until __now__ to come out of the fucking woodwork and stick her snoot into things and get Bones all agitated? Who moved the Hellmouth rock? _He felt his shoulders tense and a kink in the back of his neck as he thought about the last time he'd seen her face to face. _For fuck's sake._ _Isn't Spike or whatever schmuck she's shacking up with these days not cutting it anymore? Can't they keep her occupied up there in New York or anyplace else that isn't here? I mean, whatever limp-dicked douche she's with now must be letting her down in a pretty serious way if she's come trotting all the way down here because...well, why-the-fuck-ever she's here. Especially seeing as how she basically called me a cosmic fucking sellout and threw me out of her apartment after accepting the gig with Wolfram & Hart. Now she comes down here looking for me? It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any fucking sense at all. _

"She came to see you?" Booth asked, taking a half-step back as he stared at her, somewhat gape-mouthed, in shock. "You saw Buffy? What? When?"

As she watched the questions roll off his tongue, and out of his mouth, her eyes widened in fear as she mistook his inquiries more as a sign of interest than of concern. "Oh, God—" she whispered, her voice cracking even as the words trailed off.

"Bren," he said, his gut sinking as he saw the rosy color drain from her cheeks and her eyelids flutter as he recognized that her mind had latched onto his words as proof of her long-standing, deep-seated fears and insecurities. He reached up and covered his eyes as he knew from the fractured tone of her voice that she'd misunderstood him. "I don't understand how she found me," he stammered. "I mean well, fuck. I didn't even know how to find myself before Halloween, and that wasn't _that _long ago. I mean, it was just six months ago, give or take, right?"

He winced a bit and wanted to kick himself as he realized he knew _exactly _how long ago it had been, since he knew how many weeks along her pregnancy was. _For fuck's sake, Booth, _he cursed himself. _Come on, you supreme Fenian dickwad. Shit._

Brennan stared at him, the look of incredulity still clear on her face as she bit her lip and looked away, unable to even summon a brief verbal response, which, in turn worried Booth even more.

"But I-I...Bren, look," he said quickly. "I don't want anything to do with her," he insisted. "You know that. I haven't wanted to see her, let alone be with her, for a long, _long _time. You know that." He leveled his strong, confident brown gaze in her direction as he insisted, "You _do _know that, Bren."

She narrowed her eyes once more, swallowing the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. She shook her head as she jabbed a finger into his chest and said, "I hate her."

"I know you do, baby," he said, hopeful that Brennan's ability to speak was a good sign. "I know you do." He hesitated for a moment, then added thoughtfully, "I hate that she makes you feel this way. You have no idea how much I abso-fuckin'-lutely hate it."

Still biting her lip, Brennan raised her bright blue eyes up as she sought his out. "I _fucking _hate her," she repeated. "I hate her now that I've met her even more than I did before, Booth. And, _that _should tell you something."

Nodding, he couldn't help himself, as he repeated, "I know, baby. I know." He stopped and then, knowing he needed more information before Brennan possibly clammed up again, said, "I don't know how or why she'd coming looking for me. And I don't really give a flying fuck why she was here or how she found us. But, Bones, I need...I need to know. What happened?"

Booth mentally cursed himself when he saw Brennan's body stiffen again as she remained quiet, despite his question. _Damn it, _his thoughts echoed. _I swear to God. If Buffy hurt her, I'm gonna rip her skinny little blonde ass apart with my bare hands. Fuck. _Still, knowing he needed to know what had occurred, he tried again.

"Did she...did she come to the Jeffersonian or something?" he tried again. "Was that it? Did she find you there and say something to you?"

Letting out several deep breaths, Brennan finally shook her head. "It doesn't matter what she said," Brennan answered, even as she unconsciously took another step towards him. Her face flushed red as her nostrils flared, minute signs of her body language that warned Booth that something had caused her to shift from not wanting to talk to maybe doing something more. "It doesn't matter what the Slayer said to me, Booth. All that does matter is that she can't have you. I played second and even third fiddle to a _lot _of women over the years between Chicago and the Halloween five years ago in L.A. I shared you because I had to—but, I'm not doing it anymore, Booth. She can't have you. I won't let her."

Booth blinked, feeling on the one hand, a warm flash of pride and silent satisfaction at hearing her stake her claim to him and yet on the other hand, a surge of helpless frustration at being unable to elicit the details behind her anger. "Bren," he said, calling her by the name he'd known her by the longest as he tried to reassure her. "I'm yours, lass. Only yours. You're the only woman I love and the only woman who'll ever have me. I'm not going anywhere. I'm never leaving you. I promise. Nothing will ever change that." He pressed his lips together firmly as he cocked his head to the side and gave her a small nod. "_Ever. _You know that. I'm yours. Only yours. Always."

She paused, seemingly unmoved by his words, then muttered, "I haven't killed anyone in a long time, but I think I might have to make an exception and get Mother's dagger out if she so much as tries to come within a hundred feet of you again. I haven't used that blade in a long time, but it's like riding a bicycle, I'm sure. One doesn't forget how to wield a dagger. If she...if she tries again—I-I...I won't have it. I just won't."

Booth couldn't completely bite back the faint smile that flashed across his lips at hearing the possessive aggression flare from his longtime lover in a way he hadn't heard from her in quite a long while, and most definitely in the entire time he'd known her as Seeley Booth.

"I wouldn't blame you," he said, still unsure about what exactly happened that afternoon as his mind raced, struggling to assemble the confusing pieces of the puzzle that Brennan was tossing at him as she rambled into something that made some kind of sense.

_What the hell happened today? _he wondered. _Obviously Buffy was here in D.C. I mean, there's nothing else that could send Bones to DEFCON 1. But why? And how the fuck did she manage to find out I'm here, never mind track down __Bones__? And why would she even want to talk to Bones anyway ? There's nothing good goin' on there, I tell ya. This is fucked up six ways to Sunday. _He saw the anger in Brennan's rigid features but felt an ache deep in his chest at seeing the way her blue eyes glistened with tears she was clearly fighting to hold back amid her rage._ Buffy came to find me, and somehow-the-fuck-other must've decided to get at me through Bren. That's the only thing that makes any sense. _His eyes narrowed as he chewed on the idea. _ Wait, _he thought. _The only reason she'd seek out Bren is because she couldn't get to me, so that means she must've tried to get to me, but failed, and Bones knows about it...and that's not good. Not good at all. Because it means they did more than a hi-bye type thing and...oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. _

He saw her flinch and her hand quickly fly up to palm her belly as she closed her eyes and grunted quietly.

"Bren," he said quickly, intuitively knowing that their baby had been roused from its normal rest at this time of day by its mother's unsettled emotional state. "Listen, okay?" he whispered, briefly touching her pregnant belly with the very tips of his fingers, then bringing his hand up to gently lift her chin so her watery blue eyes met his warm, wide-eyed gaze. "She's nothing to me, he said firmly but with a voice deliberately devoid of the heat or edginess of anger. "Okay? You know that, right? She's nothing to me. _Nothing. _And you—you're everything to me. _Everything_." He stopped and shook his head, then added, "You always have been, even when I didn't know it, Bren. You always have been, and more importantly, _you always will be_."

"That's not what she thinks," Brennan snapped, the sting of Buffy Summers' words still fresh as the Slayer's words rang in her ears as she gently pulled away from Booth so that some physical distance once again separated. "That's not what she thinks at all."

"_The suspension of disbelief's just too great. I mean, a girl like me? Well, yeah, sure. That makes sense. He and I make sense. All you have to do is look at us, and anyone could tell that the two of us match. We fit each other. But, you two? Nope. It just doesn't compute. It would never work. You don't match. You don't fit."_

"_No, I just don't see it. I just—no way I see him tucking in with an ice queen like you."_

"_See, I just don't see it, you with a guy like him, let alone getting a guy like that to settle down and make any type of life with you, let alone love you. I mean, women like you, Dr. Brennan? I see it all the time. You're sad, frustrated, warped woman who no one could ever love. You aren't worth it. So, yeah, Angel could never say 'I love you' to a woman like you and mean it, let alone any of the other stuff that comes with the gold bands and baby carriage." _

As Buffy's words echoed in her memory, Brennan felt a wave of nausea roll through her belly the likes of which she hadn't felt since the debilitating morning sickness of her first trimester. Annoyed that the Slayer continued to have such a hold on her thoughts and emotions, Brennan gritted her teeth and glared at Booth, who continued to provide an easier target for her anger.

"She still thinks you're waiting like the fucking poor boy standing next to the oven, drooling over her cookies, and fuck, Booth—" She stepped towards him again, backing the pair of them further towards the couch. "If I ever see you eat another cookie ever again, I'm going to have to do very bad things to you, you goddamn Booth Cookie Monster. Not a single one. No Girl Scout cookies—I don't care how much you like those Thin Mints and Samoas or what a good cause you support by buying them or how sweet the little Brownie girls look standing out there in front of the Safeway. And none of those warm chocolate chip cookies from McDonald's you like so much. Not even a goddamn fortune cookie that Sid throws into your bag when we get take-out from Wong-Foo's. Okay? No cookies. Not single one. Not now. Not ever. Never again. Got it?"

A faint smile flashed across Booth's lips at hearing the threat. and he could tell by the twinkle in his wife's eye—even if they were still newlyweds, because he'd known her so well for so very long—that she knew she was ranting.

"So you want me to agree to a cookie moratorium?" he asked her, a slight teasing edge to his voice. "Okay, I guess—we can hash out the details later." He flashed his eyebrows, testing the barometer of her anger, which seemed to have cooled from a roaring, open flame to a brightly-glowing smolder. "Come on, lass," he crooned. "You know I've hardly eaten a cookie for years now, but I have a slice of pie every day if I can manage to get over there to the diner with you. I don't need cookies, lass. A nice warm slice of sweet and gooey apple pie like you make for me and my gorgeous, red-haired, blue-eyed beauty—that's all I need." He took a few step towards her, once again closing the distance between them as he reached out and fanned his hand over the side of her belly, just barely ghosting over the seam of her knit top before coming to rest on her hip. "You're all I need," he said, drawing in a breath as he felt a raw, hard tugging behind his navel at feeling her body and their baby. "Just you and Parker and this kid, Bren. That's all I'll ever need, and I can die a happy man."

Brennan shot him a pouting look that he knew to be a sign that, despite her still-smoldering anger and her skepticism, deep down she knew there was truth in his words, even as she pushed him away and edged them away from the wall. Booth frowned a little, lowering his chin as he raised his eyebrows and looked at her solicitously.

"She's nothing," he said to her with a pleading nod. "You know that, Bren. She's _nothing _to me, and she's nuts if she thinks I'd give her the fucking time of day after all this time, let alone let her get close to me to ever letting her be anything more than nothing to me. You know that. You know how much I love you."

"She wasn't _always_ nothing," Brennan muttered. She then stopped herself from saying more, lest she go off on another tearing rant.

She forced herself to bite her lip and take a couple of deep breaths. She realized that if she wasn't careful, she might get lost in their old argument about the Slayer. In that moment, Brennan wanted to focus instead on the more important issue of how she would punish Booth like she hadn't since the days of Angelus if he ever gave her cause where the Slayer was concerned. It had been quite a long time since she'd had such a thought about Booth...quite a long time. While the Slayer had come up every now and then in the few years they'd spent together, off and on, when Angel had lived in L.A., and she'd first started at the Jeffersonian, she'd never felt an intense desire to extract retribution from him because of his relationship with Buffy Summers. In fact, there were only two instances she could recall offhand where she'd felt such an inclination. The first had occurred on the night when Spike had showed up at her apartment, and she'd first learned of Angel's relationship with the teenage Slayer. The second one, more ironically, had been an instance where Brennan's ire had been manipulated by one who knew her _almost _as well as Angel did.

_Brennan sat down on her sofa and leaned back to observe her friend of many centuries as the green-eyed blonde vampire balanced her drink on the top of her swollen, pregnant belly and ranted about another green-eyed blonde—a young, small-breasted human, whom her estranged childe had fallen in with some years earlier. Although Brennan had instantly recognized her longtime friend, despite the changes her unexpected pregnancy had wrought in her body, in a way, Darla's appearance had changed drastically since last she'd seen her, not long before she'd gone to Sunnydale for the first time and been staked by Angel. The usually vivacious vampire seemed...degraded and...weary, if Brennan was to be perfectly honest. While her basic features were unchanged, her clear complexion had given way to splotchy patches and an overall dull sheen while her hair's silky fullness had been lost, leaving her with stringy, unkempt locks. Darla's catlike movements that Brennan had become accustomed to seeing were now slow and awkward as her body and spirit clearly struggled under the burden of pregnancy. In many ways, Darla seemed a far cry from who she'd once been. Trying to conceal her surprise while still appearing empathetic, Brennan raised her eyebrows and listened as her friend continued to rant. _

_"I mean, humans are food," Darla growled in her husky rasp of a voice. She looked up from her drink with a grin and shrugged, then said, "They always have been, and they always will be. Nothing more, nothing less. And he __knows__ that even if he chooses to deny his natural instincts because of that stinking soul of his. Humans are food, __not__ friends." Brennan shot Darla a pointed look with an arched eyebrow in question which quickly caused Darla to roll her eyes with a sigh. "As ever and as always, Tempe, present company excepted...but then again, I wouldn't call you __completely__ human now, would I? Even if you like to play that pretense up for whatever your purposes are since I can't drain you dry like I would any other sorry, sopping mess of flesh and bones now, could I?"_

_Brennan nodded her acknowledgement at Darla's reluctant compliment and then chuckled. "You're welcome, as ever, to try again, Darla. But we both know what happened the last time you did __that__, don't we?"_

_Darla's comely face twisted into a slight sneer as she conceded, "Yes, yes we certainly do, Tempe. We certainly do." _

_She narrowed her eyes and let her gaze fall briefly on the long arch of Brennan's neck, where the marks left there by her fangs had long since faded away to almost nothing as the decades turned to centuries and the two women had (mostly) let bygones be bygones even if Darla continued to still be enthralled by what had happened when she'd first tried to feed and turn the witch some three and a half centuries earlier._

_It was January of 1667, a few months after the Great Fire that destroyed a wide swath of the older sections of London, including most of the Cheapside district where Brennan had lived since moving out of her father's house in the late 1540s. Brennan's home was one of the the few structures left standing in Cheapside after the conflagration, which led her neighbors to quietly whisper that she had made some kind of bargain with the Devil that conferred on her home some sort of unholy protection. The ensuing chaos left many Londoners homeless and destitute, and it was into this disarray that a beautiful, seemingly ageless young woman named Darla had moved into the ward of Aldgate, just to the east of the burned areas of the city. Brennan made Darla's acquaintance while shopping for some new dresses, and the two women quickly realized that they had a shared interest in fashion, music, theatre, fine wines and brandies, gossip and—as they later discovered—intelligent, handsome, broad-minded if somewhat rakish men. _

_One night, Brennan invited Darla over for drinks after the two saw a play and, after draining one bottle of sherry and the better part of a second, the vampire made her move. She leaned in, pulled Brennan into an embrace before the moderately-intoxicated witch realized what was happening, and sank her teeth into Brennan's neck. As soon as Darla's fangs were buried gum-deep into Brennan's flesh, she'd felt a jolt of electricity burn her lips and a bright flash of blue light that threw her back against the opposite side of the settee. Brennan brought her hand to the side of her neck and scowled, then muttered something under her breath. Darla couldn't help but smirk as Brennan saw her out into the cold, moonless night, dabbing away the blood that oozed from her neck with a lace-trimmed linen handkerchief. But being summarily thrown out of Brennan's parlor was only the beginning of the witch's revenge on the vampire. For a full fortnight thereafter, every time Darla would feed, regardless of the age or sex of her prey, the warm, sweet, slightly metallic blood that flowed from them tasted faintly of stale urine. Five days after her attempt to turn Brennan in the witch's own parlor, Darla arrived home to find a note waiting for her on a silver platter on her bedside table next to a bottle of Amontillado sherry. "I'm not an ordinary woman," it said. "You would be wise to treat me with extraordinary care in the future. With warmest regards, Temperance." _

_Darla shrugged away the memory. "You are, indeed, an extraordinary woman, Tempe," she said with a charming grin. "You always have been, and I think I'm safe in saying you always will be."_

_Smiling, Brennan gestured at her friend, attempting to keep the conversation moving, lest Darla go into __another__ half hour rant about Angel and the Slayer. "Anyway, you were saying? About Angel?"_

"_I'm sorry, Tempe," Darla said with a sigh and a somewhat sheepish smile. "I know you hate it when I ramble. But you and I just go back so many years, I long ago stopped thinking of you as just another one of the girls and...well, we've been around so long and seen so many, many things it's hard not to go off on a tangent every now and again, especially when it comes to Angelus..." She shrugged, then said with the bitter disgust still present in her voice, "I just don't get it—even after being tainted with that human soul, that he would find anything at all in a stupid little human girl like that, it just doesn't make any sense. Considering the kind of women Angelus has kept company with over the years..." Darla gave Brennan a knowing look, which the latter did not immediately answer except with a thoughtful blink. "Well, Angelus shacking up with that Slayer is just slumming of the very worst, absolutely bizarre kind, don't you agree?"_

"_Yes," she answered. "I do." Brennan nodded in response as she sighed before she continued. "When you're right, Darla, you're right," she told her. "I can't find fault with your logic thus far. Based on what you've told me...it's quite...confusing. He sounds like he's acting illogical...irrational..."_

"_Well," Darla snorted, "that's putting it mildly, Tempe. You know, it's enough that he has that damned soul, but now to throw it all away and actually fall 'in love'? Oh, his 'first true love'...his 'first real love.' Give me a goddamned break. What a bunch of fucking sentimental human bullshit." The vampire rolled her eyes and sighed as she stared at her pregnant belly, not noticing that Brennan's face had paled and her blue eyes had suddenly darkened at hearing Darla's words. Darla shook her head with a dismissive _pffft_, and looked up at the sound of Brennan clearing her throat to find her friend blinking away a thought. _

"_Lest you think that this..." Darla looked down at her swollen belly with a grimace. "You know, that this was some kind of wicked, mystical joke because Angelus had fallen madly in love with me—or me with him—well, it wasn't." _

_She took one last drink of the water then set the glass on the side table with a loud clink. _

"_Not that it wasn't fan-fucking-tastic," she said. "Because it was. I mean, you know. Angelus is a lot of things. Cocky as all hell. Smart, though sometimes he shoots his mouth off in a way that might lead you to think otherwise. Ruthless when he wants to be, which isn't nearly often as he used to before he got that damn soul of his. Brooding, which he always had a habit of doing once in a while, but now it's like a fucking preformance art form for him." The vampire rolled her eyes and sighed. "But if there's one thing that's never, ever changed," she said as the frown on her face curved into a wicked grin. "Angelus can fuck." She glanced over at her friend and saw a flicker in her bright blue eyes, and took that as a sign of encouragement. "I mean, look, I used to fuck, professionally, like I know you remember, so I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur when it comes to sex._

"_Connaisseuse, actually," Brennan corrected her automatically. "Connaisseur is the masculine form..."_

_Darla rolled her eyes her friend's stereotypical comment. "Whatever," she said. "The point is, I know a good fuck when I get one ,and I can tell you, Angelus is very, very good at fucking. He's not exactly hung like a horse. However, like we both know, he's very well equipped. More importantly, he knows how to use what he's got...and then some. And even before he tucks in and gets to the actual fucking, that mouth of his does prove useful because he's very good with his tongue." The vampire waggled her eyebrows. "I had to give the young lad a bit of guidance at first, but he took to instruction very, very well and proved quite a natural." Seeing Brennan's eyebrow suddenly quick, she stopped and tilted her head as she narrowed her eyes at the forensic anthropologist. "What? You know as well as I do that, for all of his faults, especially now that he's developed that meddlesome conscience, he's worth keeping around just for the fucking. And the three times he took me that night..." Darla smiled and shook off the shiver that seemed to rattle down her spine at the thought of her last encounter with Angel. "He drove me out of my damned mind. It was like a fucking out of body experience. He's definitely not lost his touch in that department." _

"_Yes," Brennan said, her voice edged with a certain impatience. "I'm well aware of exactly how talented Angel can be when it comes to sex."_

_Darla laughed. "So you are," she said. "And he may not be the most classically handsome man I've ever shared a bed with, he's very attractive. He's good looking, great in bed, funny and charming in his own way—why the hell would he need to go bottom-feeding and spend his time with a stupid dilettante like the Slayer when he could be spending his nights with a civilized, sophisticated woman who actually knows how to fuck and can keep up with his appetites?"_

"_I don't know," Brennan finally managed to utter, her voice a tad rough, but thankfully Darla seemed too distracted or didn't care enough to notice the minute chink that had flashed for a few seconds in Brennan's normally stout suit of emotional armor. "It's not as if he's some kind of hideous-looking troll who can't find an intelligent, attractive female of more suitable maturity to meet his needs for companionship or sexual satisfaction." _

_"And she was a virgin!" the vampire coughed, the repugnant disgust clear in her voice and bearing as she replied. "You did know that, didn't you? I mean, yes, Angelus always had a thing for deflowering unwilling virgins in his heyday, but he never went back and plowed the same field twice once he'd popped their cherries. Once he broke them in, that was it. He was done. He never went back_." _Darla's lip curled as she looked off to the side, her gaze settling on the brass-tacked, dark brown leather armchair in the corner of Brennan's living room. After a moment, she looked up to meet Brennan's eyes and saw a twinkle in her old friend's pale blues, a shimmer of something—not agreement, exactly, but more some kind of recognition—that spurred her to continue. "Angelus was a masterpiece, Tempe—you know that—and to see him ruined, first by the taint of the hideousness of a soul with that horrible conscience of his and now, worse yet, by the silliness of this human puppy-love." She stopped and made an exaggerated choking sound to illustrate her continued frustration before she cleared her throat and continued. "I guess what's hardest to accept is that he seems to have lost all sense of decorum," she sighed. "I mean, Angelus had skills and a sense of style—maybe even too much style, given as he was sometimes to foolish flourishes that put us in danger from time to time. That I could accept that as one of his many delightful little quirks since it was almost always fun when we did get into trouble. But for him to fall head over heels for this insipid little twit who probably can't suck a cock without gagging on it? I mean, for fuck's sake, Tempe. How could he have fallen so damn far?" _

"_Well," Brennan began to reply before Darla promptly cut her off again. "I—"_

_"I mean, Jesus Christ, Tempe," she huffed, cutting of her friend. "It's absolutely beyond comprehension that a...thing...like that could possibly be enough for someone with the libido and, well, talents that Angelus has." The word 'thing' dripped from Darla's lips like a curse. "It makes no sense. None of it. You have no idea how much time I've spent trying to figure it out, going over it again and again and again in my head since he staked me for that dumb bitch. And although I may not be as smart as you are, I'm no fool." _

_Darla shot Brennan a pointed look, then looked away, her eyes glazing over a bit as she sat for a few moments in a pensive silence, her jaw shifting as she gnawed on a thought._

"_You know," she finally said with a sigh. "I can forgive him for having staked me for that stupid Slayer cunt, I guess, because he was obsessing about her the way he always seemed to when he set his mind to having a woman he wanted. He got the same way about Drusilla, remember?" Darla didn't wait for a response from Brennan before she shook her head and continued. "You know, when you've been around as long as you and I have, Tempe, you realize that all relationships have ups and downs. No, it was the fact that he carried on with her so long, and lost his edge—you know, that dangerous, edgy way he always had about him that we both found so fucking sexy. He shacked up with her and let her put his balls on the shelf, and with him the very essence of what made Angelus so...well, Angelus. She gutted him...the magnificent beast that he was."_

_Brennan sat there in silence for a minute, then looked up and said, "It doesn't make any sense to me." There was a gravity in her voice that made Darla's eyes narrow. _

"_You know," the vampire said. "I was angry with you, when we had that horrible falling-out between us. When was it? '33 or '34?" She raised her eyebrows and Brennan gave a curt nod, but didn't say anything. "But I wasn't angry with you because you took Angelus in. I never begrudged you your relationship with Angelus—the affair you had with him those years in London, and then afterwards, here in Chicago even though I knew all about it. I've been what I am for too many years to think that anything or anyone belongs to me alone, not even my childe. In fact, I was glad you got to enjoy him, keep him from getting into too much trouble. Especially after Dru turned William—it was too much to keep tabs on all of them, especially with everything else I had going on with the Order of Aurelius—so it was just as well that you were with him. So, now? How I feel because of him shacking up with the Slayer? It __isn't__ jealousy, Tempe. We both know I really don't do that. It's just not my style. I never have, and I never will." _

"_I know you don't," Brennan said, kneading the inside of her lip between her teeth as she knew that she could not honestly say the same for herself. _

_Darla nodded and smiled sweetly. "No," she repeated. "I don't. So even though I know you were livid with me, we eventually were able to get passed things, just like we always do. I know you didn't approve of what I did in Romania, after the Gypsies got to him, or in China. And while I understand what you did with him afterwards, I didn't necessarily approve of it. And...if we're being completely honest, I was angry because you were angry with me. You didn't approve of what I'd done, and it...well, it pissed me off because you were just so fucking sanctimonious about it. After all that we've shared, after all the centuries, it really pissed me off that you were throwing stones at me when you were were all of a sudden taking the moral high road from that glass house you had taken to living in with him in Chicago. It annoyed the fuck out of me. I can admit it. It really did. Moral high roads are for limp-wristed humans. Not for people like us. And even if you aren't __like__ me, in a sense, we are of a kind."_

"_Darla," the witch said, a certain tiredness creeping into her voice as the subject began to wear on her patience. "I accepted your apology. It's...well, we're past that now."_

"_Yes, yes," Darla said with a sheepish smile. "I was just trying to say—well, I guess I've digressed again. I just think you and me—we make sense. You and Angelus? Me and Angelus? Sure. It makes sense why we enjoy him...his company, and why he'd take pleasure in ours. We are women of sophistication. We've seen the world. We know what it's like out there. The Slayer? She knows nothing. I just don't get it. How could he be that fucking enthralled by a rather unremarkable human aside from that fact that she's a goddamn Slayer? I mean, you're the one with a Ph.D. now."_

"_Three actually," Brennan murmured, causing Darla to roll her eyes in response. "If we're being accurate."_

_The blonde vampire clucked her tongue in verbal reply before she added, "Fine, whatever, Tempe. Yes, we all know you're brilliant, Dr. Brennan. But the point is, you know what I mean. So tell, me. Please. Tell me what I'm missing where my offspring and the Slayer are concerned."_

"_It's like I said already, Darla," Brennan said with a shrug. "I don't think it makes any logical or rational sense. Obviously, he's not acting as he usually would because of her influence. That has little to do with him being ensouled or not." _

"_Hmmmph," Darla huffed. "I don't know, Tempe." She stared at her friend for a moment, her jaw hardening before she shook her head and said, "Let's put it this way. If I were you, I'd watch my back. That fucking little Slayer has wormed her way so deep into his brain that he's definitely not thinking straight. If he staked me once to impress that stupid little twit, there's no telling what else he's willing to do to you." _

"_Well," Brennan said, her lips forming a hard line as she narrowed her eyes and blinked a couple of times. _

_She considered Darla's point for a few seconds and, as she remembered the night Spike had come to her apartment in Chicago to tell her how Angel had staked his sire after falling in love with the Slayer of Sunnydale, she felt a tension spread through her body like a creeping vine. Her brow crinkled as her body stiffened once more at the thought of Angel trying to not only replace her with the petite blonde from Sunnydale but kill her as well simply because it might be the Slayer's wish that he do so. Sure, things had changed between them since he'd moved from New York to California a few years back, but so, too, had things changed between Angel and almost everyone else in his small circle of friends and associates. Still, Brennan knew that of all of them, to him, __she__ was different. She knew that, deep down, no matter how much things had changed between them, it would never change enough so that he'd ever really try to destroy her. She cleared her throat quietly and blinked again, taking a few deep breaths to relax away some of the tightness in her chest as she reminded herself that no matter what, the fact that a third of her soul resided inside of him set her alone apart from every other woman in the universe (human or otherwise) and would keep him tied to her in some way, no matter how much time or distance separated them or what had happened between them. The thought brought her a bit of comfort as she looked back over at Darla. _

"_I'm not worried," Brennan said, with only the faintest waver in her voice belying her words. "No matter what Angel may do to me, I can assure you with absolute certainty that I'll never, __ever__ find myself knocked up, pregnant with his baby after a night of non-stop rough fucking because he's decided to go and do something more than brood when he's feeling overwhelmed and moody." She smirked, then, without giving her old friend a moment to say anything, she grunted out a laugh, rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively.__"And, while it's true that maybe you have to worry about her being a Slayer since you've got that whole 'vampire thing' going on, Darla_," _she continued. "But, fortunately, I don't need to worry about such issues. _

_Darla's delicate jaw suddenly turned rigid and the muscles in front of her ear ticked as the sparkle of humor in her eyes vanished and she shot Brennan a sharp, cutting look. _

"_And I can promise you this," Brennan said gravely, her voice dropping into a lower, darker octave. "If I ever see the little bitch, and she so much as blinks at me the wrong way, Angel won't have the chance to try and kill me at her bidding. All it will take is one second_—" _She didn't know it, but her eyes flashed an electric blue for a split second in a way that had always scared Darla the most when it came to what her old friend was really capable of if she was pushed too far. The witch then snapped her fingers to emphasize her point. "Because I'll take her out before she can ever hurt me. I'll kill her. I'll fucking kill her. And they'll never, __ever__ find her miserable, virginesque little corpse because they'll be nothing left to find when I'm finished with her, I promise you that."_

_Darla's irritation dissolved away, and a bright smile widened across her face as she heard the poison dripping from every word that Brennan spat out in her vitriolic rant. Hearing the darkness and the dangerous anger bubble up from her friend of many centuries in a way that she hadn't heard for so long that she couldn't remember, Darla couldn't help but smile with some relief at knowing that there was at least some small kernel of the old Temperance Brennan left hidden beneath the prim and reserved propriety of the forensic anthropology academic mantle she wrapped herself up in this days. Her fiery passion and lethal power seemingly cloaked underneath layers of scientific objectivity belied something that was still there, even if it was buried so far and so deep that perhaps even Brennan had temporarily forgotten about it. In this, she knew why Angelus had wanted Brennan and why, even after being transformed by the Gypsy curse that saddled him with a soul, he was still attracted to the auburn-haired witch with the bright blue eyes. Amid all the terrifying changes in her life and the uncertainty that lay before her, Darla had taken a small measure of comfort in knowing that at least some things never changed and probably never would._

"After all these years," Brennan muttered, grinding her teeth a little as she felt the residual indignation crackle through her limbs as she curled her fingers into tight fists. She shook her head and blinked away the memory as she looked back at Booth and scowled at him. The irony of her comment to Darla—_"I'll never, __ever__ find myself knocked up, pregnant with his baby after a night of non-stop rough fucking because he's decided to go and do something more than brood when he's feeling overwhelmed and moody"_—was not lost on her as she bit the inside of her lip, silently reminding herself that, above all, karma was a bitch and was apparently exacting her revenge on the witch who carried on affairs for centuries with impunity, never once worrying that she could become pregnant as a result. Brennan reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, wondering in that moment if she looked as changed and unattractive as Darla had in the last stage of her pregnancy even though she herself was not so far advanced.

"Jesus Christ, I know we've been over this before, Booth, but I still can't get it sometimes. I don't think I'll ever really understand it. I mean, what were you fucking thinking?" she hissed. "Because I can't tell you how many hours Darla and I spent killing pitcher after pitcher of whiskey sours trying to figure out what the fuck you saw in the Slayer...besides the obvious, that is."

"Whiskey sours?" Booth groaned.

Her words were barbed with an anger, and deeper still, a long-standing hurt, that he didn't know how to soothe. He'd tried to reassure her, to remind her that he was hers, and that he always would be, but still she seethed. Desperate, he reached for one of the only other arrows he had left in his quiver to see if he could salvage the situation: cocky humor.

With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, he quipped, "What a shit way to ruin good whiskey, lass. I'd have thought you'd know better, all the years you spent with me drinkin' fine Irish whiskeys." The lazy smile that formed on the corners of his lips as he let his long-abandoned brogue creep into his speech once more quickly fled as he saw her bright eyes flash, then darken in a split second.

"Look, Bren," he said, his voice turning serious again."She's nothing," he said. "What we had—it's gone. She'll never have me, Bren, because I'm yours. I'll always be yours. Just yours."

Smacking her lips together, Brennan growled, "You know, just in case you've forgotten, Booth, or there's any doubt in your mind, let me be very clear right now. I'm not as forgiving as Darla was, just in case you're wondering. I won't take being thrown over for—how did Darla put it, since she said it so very, _very _well?—I won't be thrown over for the Slayer bitch just because she's 'a fresh, new pussy' that you 'got off on breaking in' once upon a time. So, remember this if you remember nothing else—if you _ever _leave me for her, it won't be pretty."

Brennan's eyes flashed brightly again, and Booth saw the slight flaring of her nostrils, and when she puckered her lips thoughtfully, his eyes were drawn to them. Her mouth parted as she began to speak again, and for a moment, all Booth could think about was that mouth and the way she tasted and the unrestrained way she kissed him when the only thing that seemed to exist in the world was the two of them and their want of one another. His balls hitched, and he felt his muscles draw as tight as a bow and it was everything he could do in that fleeting moment not to cover that mouth with his and kiss her as hard as he could and taste every corner of her mouth until the two of them were nearly delirious from lack of oxygen. He shifted his weight from one hip to the other and was about to move in to kiss her when she began to speak again.

"I promise you that," she added with a grave nod of her head. "Because, do you know what I'll do to you, Booth? I'll—"

Booth felt his heart pounding in his ears in the wake of her breathless rant, and his racing mind could think of only one way to break her momentum. Taking a quick breath, he took a couple of steps towards her, leaned in, brought his hand up to gently curl his fingertips around the edge of her jaw, pulling her face towards his as he kissed her and covered her mouth with his before Brennan could object.

After a few seconds of resistance, she made a throaty growling sound, and her soft lips parted to his kiss. For a few moments, he felt the angry tension in her body relax away as she surrendered herself into the kiss, and in that moment, as her reticence seemed to fade, Booth's hand fell from her jaw to her chest. He cupped one of her very full breasts in his hand, squeezing it with a throaty grunt as he drew his thumb across the stiffening point of her nipple and jerked his hip against her. He wanted her to feel his body had responded to her even if she doubted it, so that she knew that he wanted her, as intensely as he always had, if not more so because she was his beyond any doubt and it had been too many weeks since he'd been able to show her how much he loved her while feeding his hunger for her body.

On her part, Brennan felt his arousal and his desperation as his mouth hungrily grasped at hers, and she knew that if she didn't do something, he would be fucking her senseless in a matter of moments, just like he had so very many times before. She felt a hard, nearly painfully tightening stab of want between her legs at the idea of feeling him this way again, but something inside of her made her hold back, recoiling a little as his other hand brushed across her rounded belly and she felt her chest tighten at the notion of losing control of herself. Something in his aggression, and in the way her body responded to it, made her uneasy even as she enjoyed his kiss and feeling his tongue sweep across hers as he moaned into her kiss.

When they broke apart as they each gasped for air, she pulled away and growled at him, pushing him back towards the sofa behind him.

"It's not going to be that easy," Brennan muttered, wiping her upper lip with the back of her hand as she glared back at him. "This isn't...we aren't back in your penthouse in L.A. and the only reason I'm pissed at you is because you fucked some half-demon skank who smelled like watermelon and patchouli under a spell of compulsion while I was waiting for you, Booth. This is so much fucking more than that. You can't just kiss and make it better, Booth, no matter what you think, so you can fucking forget it."

"I don't know," he chuckled, making little effort to bite back the grin that spread across his face as he drank in the sight of her. Her cheeks were flushed, and her slender pink lips were swollen, deliciously beestung from their kissing, and her chest was heaving as she struggling to catch her breath. "Hmmm," he murmured as he leaned in again, his head cocked to one side as he contemplated stealing another kiss, fairly sure as he was that she was just one good, long, tongue-tangling kiss away from giving into her desire to get fucked.

"I'm a pretty damn good kisser," he snickered, grinning and quirking an eyebrow. "Come on," he prompted her, then shrugged and laughed. "Did you 'n' Darla ever talk 'bout my kisses? Probably not, huh? That's right, lass, 'cause the kind o' kisses you've been enjoyin' over the years is a whole different kettle o' fish than Darla ever got outta me. Yeah, I think you could definitely tell Darla a thing or two about kissin' me." He licked his lips, letting his tongue linger on the top of his lower lip as he could taste the faint trace of her there. "Hmm?" he murmured with a smirk. "Come on, Bren. You know that you're the only one I've ever kissed this way. The only one who's ever gotten me hard just from kissin'..."

He reached out and caressed her upper arm with the back of his knuckles, but then gave her a quick squeeze. "And I bet you're wet from that kiss, aren't ya?" he asked her, his voice dropping a half-octave as he licked his own kiss-swollen lips. "Are those sweet little pretty lace panties of yours damp, lass?" he asked with a lewd, crooked-mouthed grin. "I'm pretty sure they are, because you know that your mouth isn't the only part of you I'm good at kissing." A quiet growl rattled in his throat as he let the remark hang in the air between them and watched her blue eyes flicker back at him. "So come on, Bren, tell me that I'm right. Admit it, and we can get on to more pleasant things, hmm?"

"I'm not in the mood, Booth," she warned him. "I'm serious. I've told you that. This is...you can't just expect me to let you start fucking me just because we haven't had sex in almost a month, and your cock is stiff, and you think all can be made better by a good hard fucking. Because, it can't anymore, okay? So it's best you tuck that cocky Irish ego of yours back wherever the fuck you dredged it up from, because that's the last damn thing I want to hear out of you tonight. Frankly, between Claddagh rings and the rest of it, I've had enough Fenian nostalgia for one afternoon, and...well, the bottom damn line is that I really, _really _don't want to hear it."

Deflated and momentarily defeated, Booth craned his neck back, staring at the ceiling for a few seconds as he breathed a long, rattling sigh. "Bones," he said, his lids fluttering helplessly over his dark brown eyes as he wracked his brain, desperate for something he could tell her that would assuage the livid jealousy that dripped from her with every word she spoke. "Have I ever betrayed you?" he asked. "Have I? Ever?" He raised his brows expectantly, deeply creasing his broad forehead which was now covered with a fine sheen of sweat. After several seconds passed without a response from her other than a blank stare beneath the overhang of her angrily furrowed brow, he cocked his head to the side and grunted. "Huh?" he prompted her. "Have I? Even once?"

"No," she grunted in concession after a long pause. "No, you never have, even though I have betrayed you."

Shaking his head in mild annoyance, Booth muttered, "Okay, it's good to know that the more some things change, the more some things stay the same." He paused for a beat and then looked her straight in the eyes. "I thought we'd settled that bit about you thinking you'd betrayed me years ago, Bren," he continued, his voice low and his tone measured. "But, whatever. We can talk about that later."

Brennan put her hands on her hips and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, causing Booth to glance down at his feet as he realized he was standing on the edge of the Azerbaijani carpet, just a couple of feet away from the sofa—close enough that if he took another two steps back, his calves would be flush against the back of the couch. He blinked a couple of times and shrugged, wondering how much farther she would push him given her state of mind.

"Right now," he said evenly, "the important thing is that I've _never_ betrayed you, not in all the years we've known each other—even if I've had plenty of opportunities to do it over the years, I _never _have—"

Brennan suddenly looked up at him and cut him off. "No, you haven't ever betrayed me, Booth," she said loudly. "But, you _did_ leave me. You left me, time and time and time again—"

"Now, that's not being fair, Bren," Booth protested. "Come on."

She punctuated every few words with a small shove of her hands. All too soon, before she'd even realized that she'd run out of room, she saw that Booth was flush with the back of their couch from how she'd backed him up against a wall of sorts, stopping their movement.

"What do you mean I'm not being fair?" she muttered. "It's true that yes, I may be slightly oversimplifying things here for the purposes of streamlining this irksome discussion that I didn't want to have even if you did since you were the one who insisted we talk, but I—"

"You're obviously having some selective memory problems, Bren, and you know it," he growled, raising his elbow to nudge one of her hands away. "And quit poking me, okay?"

"No," Brennan snapped as she jabbed him again with the palm of her hand as she pressed against his hard chest. "I told you already. I'm done listening to other people today. If anything, _you're _going to listen to _me_."

"I've _been _listening to you, alright?" he snapped. "I've been listening to you for decades, woman. And you know just as fuckin' well as I do that you've been getting the last goddamned word for a fuckin' hundred fifty years. I mean, for fuck's sake, Bones." Booth's deep-set brown eyes narrowed as he glared back at her, his frustration mounting as he locked his knees, well-aware that the backs of his legs were pressed against the microfiber of the sofa. Looking down at where her hand hovered in the space between them, just inches from his chest, he growled and batted her hand away roughly. "Now, I already asked you nicely, okay? I'm not gonna ask nice again after this, so would you please cut that the fuck out?"

Her eyes snapped up to meet his and her icy glare held his stare for almost a minute before she said, "Why should I, hmm? Why should I, Booth?"

For a while, he didn't reply, but simply returned her iron gaze. Then, finally, he raised his chin and spoke.

"Because," Booth finally said, his jaw clenching hard once again as his eyes skimmed over the contours of her face. "Because you know the truth." He let the simple statement hang in the air between them for several long moments. "The truth's long and complicated and messy, but you know what the truth is, Bren. You know that, yes, I left you, more than once, but also that you knew each time that I couldn't stay any more than you could."

Again he paused, taking a deep breath as he reached up and scratched the back of his brow knit low and hard over his eyes as he took a half-step forward, away from the sofa and towards her, further narrowing the space between them even as he felt her nudging him, somehow even without touching him managing to push him farther away.

"Even though you wanted me to stay, you knew I had to leave. You knew it had to be that way. We both did. And besides...I wasn't the only one who left."

Brennan's eyes widened for a few seconds as she swallowed heavily and her voice softened to a hoarse rasp. "What do you mean?" she managed to croak.

"You left, too, didn't you?" Booth asked, his voice gentle but firm as he spoke. "_You_ left _me_, Bren. More than once. For every time I left you, there's at least one time when you left me. We both left, we both never tried to stay. Whether it was to go to Egypt or to go to Mexico or Chicago or D.C. or me to New York or L.A. or Sunnydale or wherever. We _both _left because—well, back then?"

He pressed his lips together and shrugged his shoulders, then sighed as his warm brown eyes widened, glistening with a silent plea for her to loosen her grip on her own anger and to understand.

"It was the right thing to do, Bren, us leaving," he said wistfully. "Look—we had what time we could steal before it was _our _time to be together. Trying to force things before we were ready or we were supposed to be together never would've worked." He remembered standing at the foot of her bed in Chicago—the bed they'd shared for five years as he lived with her, sharing her life as he protected her soul and she in turn healed his—and the pained expression on her face as he cinched up his duffel bag and prepared to leave.

"You had to get out there in the world, Bren, and find your destiny just like I did." The features of his face hardened as he thought about the long years of separation they endured over the ensuing decades. "And you did," he said. "Just like me. Even though, at the time, you didn't want me to leave, and I definitely didn't want to leave, we both knew, deep down, that I _had_ to leave—that it was the way it had to be. So you gave me leave to go, and to find my own way, just like I did for you."

He swallowed hard as he remembered how hard it was, being apart from her for months or years at a time, then the chest-swelling feeling of joy at seeing her again, only to have to tear himself from her again so she could return to her life.

"But that's all in the past," he said. "Because now? _Now _is our time, Bren. It's the time we've always been waiting for. Here and now..._this _is_ ours_. The lives we have now? Well, it's what all the comings and goings and hurt and pain and suffering led up to. We have _one _life now—a life for which I thank God every damn day when I wake up and every damn night before I go to sleep—because it's a life we share. I know that I won't leave you. And you know, despite whatever today's little partial core meltdown was all about, you won't leave me. And you know what that means, Bren? That means that there's nothing and no one who can come between us if we're committed to each other and do whatever we have to do to protect what we. Nothing and no one."

Booth lowered his chin and narrowed his eyes, which flickered with a confident certainty and a laughter that he hoped would disarm her a little.

"Other people out there?" He gestured toward the window. "They can't come between us now. No way, no fucking how. I'm yours, Bren, and you're mine, and that's it. Period. End of story. So no one can ever destroy that, I promise you. I'd _die_ before I let that happen. I swear."

Brennan leaned her head back and narrowed one eye as she gave him a skeptical look, nibbling the inside of her lower lip between her teeth as she considered his words.

"I have to admit, Booth, those are very pretty words," she said with a shake of her head. "They're poetry, almost. And, you have no idea how much I want to believe them. But, before I do, you and I are going to get a few things straight. I listened to you, and now I want you to listen to me because after the day I've had, I want to make it absolutely crystal-clear how things are going to go between us regardless of whatever—" She stopped, made a face when the image of the petite blonde Slayer flashed in front of her eyes and found that she couldn't actually verbalize her name. Instead, Brennan quickly substituted, "—whatever person or persons come slithering back into our lives...either from my past or yours."

"You're the only woman from my past who will ever have my heart," he said to her, the honesty of his statement almost getting Brennan's ire to break—but not quite. "You're the only one, Bren."

Brennan pointed at him with her index finger to emphasize her words even as he gave her a half-grin/half-smirk with just enough playfulness that she knew he was doing it to infuriate and goad her—just had he'd done so for more than a century and a half. Feeling a slight bit of bravado coming back into her bearing, she knew that he knew she'd respond to his actions.

"Yes, I know that," she said, a certain warmth in her voice that melted away the smirk on his face and left him smiling with relief. "I do," she said, her blue eyes narrowing slightly as her lip curved up and her cheek twitched. "But, just so we're clear, Booth—"

She fell silent, and the faint grin on her mouth held as she leveled a hard look at him, her eyes flickering with a swirl of emotions he couldn't quite read before they narrowed again and she opened her mouth, licked the edge of her teeth, a gesture that made Booth's balls suddenly hitch hard as his focus closed in on the pink point of her tongue. As soon as his vision narrowed to watch the soft, wet point of her tongue, he felt another crackle of want flash low in his gut as he remembered the last time the tip of her tongue toyed with the most sensitive part of him, the little triangle of skin that connected his foreskin to the underside of his cock. The very thought of her pleasuring him that way made him harden with a fierce jerk he felt deep in his belly. He lost himself in the delicious daydream for a few seconds before he was snapped back to attention by the sound of her voice.

"I'm not asking you this time," she told him, her voice sharp and almost ferally aggressive as she looked at him, her pupils dilating to dark inkspots as she looked at him in a possessive way that went beyond mere territorialism.

Her gaze suddenly swiveled low, raking along the edge of his stubbled jaw, down to the open collar of his dress shirt, pausing briefly over the triangle of warm olive skin that glistened under the recessed lights above, then down the line of buttons to his Cocky belt buckle. It was there she saw confirmed what the twinkle in his brown eyes had hinted at just moments before: a familiar bulge behind his watched his hand move across his thigh and saw him rub the heel of his hand over the length of that bulge as he attempted to—not as surreptitiously as he apparently thought—take a bit of the edge off by letting himself feel just a tiny flash of the pleasure she knew his balls were aching for, and that observation, in turn, caused the dim smolder she'd been feeling for hours to suddenly burn brightly as her skin flushed.

_If he's doing that to get some type of response from me, _a sharp voice echoed in Brennan's mind. _Because he knows I might find it highly erotic when he touches himself like that, then that's __exactly__ what he's going to get...and then some._

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**-tbc-**

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**A/N2**: That was a mean place to cut it, wasn't it? Never fear, the second part is written, edited, queued, and ready to go. However, because we want to give everyone time to read this first part, we're going to wait just a bit before we post it. In the meantime, what did everyone think of that flashback with Darla and Bren? A bit more insight into one of the series' more complicated relationships, hmmm? (And we think that's saying something!) Anyway, thank you for reading. Stay tuned for the last piece of the story. It will be up shortly.~


	6. Part VI: Finally Making Peace, Pt 2

**A Would-be Reunion**

**By:** Lesera128 & dharmamonkey

**Rated: **M

**Disclaimer: **Here we posit our normal rigmarole. No, we don't own anything from _Bones _or _Angel... _or anything else. Yes, we're wreaking what havoc we can with these characters that we don't own to create an awesome story. But, since it's only for the purposes of creative enjoyment and amusing distraction, we think we're okay. Are there any other questions? No? ::blinks:: Good. Then moving on―

**A/N: **As promised, here is the final part of this story. We know it has what everyone really has been waiting for, so enjoy.

**Unf Alert: **The ladies of Dharmasera hereby issue a four-alarm Unf Alert! If you know what this means and shouldn't, please turn back now. And, if you know what this means and have been eagerly awaiting it, enjoy!

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**Part VI: Finally Making Peace, Part 2**

* * *

Brennan stared at him with a particularly possessively aggressive look glinting in her pale blue eyes as she advanced on Booth.

"I'm _telling _you," she said edgily, unable to help herself as she felt a flush of aggression at him and a renewed urge to possess him totally and completely, body and soul...as if she didn't already. Brennan punctuated her words with another sharp shove, her fingertips pressing into the hard muscle of his chest as she watched him topple over the edge of the cushion onto the couch and land at an awkward angle on his back. He blinked back up at her for a minute as she stared at him with eyes that were once again crackling with electricity. "Just in case there's any doubt for whatever reason in your mind. Never. It's not fucking happening, Booth. Not ever. You're crazy if you think I'd let you go. Not now. Not ever. You're mine. Understand?"

"I am," he replied, his voice low and a little rough as the bright sparkle of want in her eyes made his own body tighten. "I've been yours since that very first night, lass," he said, an easy grin hanging from his lips as his brown eyes glimmered with silent laughter. "You knew that when you took me home that night, that you'd make me yours, hmmm?" He licked his lips as he briefly remembered the way she'd demanded he take her that night, right on the floor of her Cheapside home, their naked, sweat-slicked bodies warmed by the fire roaring in the fireplace behind them as he pounded into her and the walls of the timbered-ceilinged room filled with the sound of her peaking cries. "Didn't you?"

He grunted a laugh as he shook his head, trying to clear the vision from his mind, as his thoughts sobered again, and he didn't wait for her to give him an answer before he continued. "Well, I guess it didn't matter if you meant to bewitch me like you have so that I've kept coming back to you or not. Because whether you did or didn't, no matter where I went, or where you went, the end result was always the same. Remember, lass? I know you remember that I _always _came back to you," he reminded her. "And you didn't have to tie me up to make me yours after that first night, although that certainly got my attention, I'll admit."

The dark brown depths of Booth's eyes flashed brightly as the corner of his mouth curled into a toothy smirk. He cocked his head slightly to one side and his flickering eyes narrowed as his smirk widened into a grin.

"Naaw," he said, his low voice rough and edged with lust and a faint twitter of laughter. "You tyin' me up aside, lass, you pushed me in ways that no other woman ever had. And you know what? A hundred and fifty years later, you're still doing that. You're doing it every damn day. You're needling me...prodding me...pushing me to rise to the challenge of meeting you with every move you make, hand to hand, toe to toe. And you know what, Bren? I love you for that. You'll never have any idea how much, but I do. I love the fact that it's made me whom I am today...is still making me a better man than I ever was without you."

The cocky, smirking look on his face softened, although the twinkle of laughter in his eyes didn't dim as he arched an eyebrow and shrugged with a quiet chuckle. "Obviously it took me awhile to figure it out, lass, me being a slow learner and all, but there's no doubt that I'm yours," he grinned at her. "I've _always _been yours, even when neither one of us knew it or either one of us doubted it...just like you're mine. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it's always gonna be. Period. The end. And you're the only one I'll ever want just like I hope to God that I'm the only one you'll ever want...forever and always, Bren. Forever and always."

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly as she considered his words and his sober, almost pleading tone. Then a smile began to curve her lips as she nodded, convinced that he was, in fact, not tempted in anyway whatsoever by the presence of his old flame. She gazed into his eyes, their wide brown depths shimmering with both an openness that eased the last lingering doubts she felt as well as a hunger that matched the rising tide of want that had been tugging at her since his lips first touched her some minutes before. She felt a renewed, strong pulse of wet heat between her legs as her body demanded that her mind finally give in and let her have him the way she wanted him. A quiet grunt of resolve sounded in the back of her throat as she stalked around the couch, a flash of resentment at her gangly form annoying her as she realized her pregnancy was limiting her movements.

"It doesn't matter," she said as she walked towards him. "Whether you want me or not."

Although he'd long since lost the ability to smell her anger hanging in the air about her the way he used to, Booth knew from the low, sexy tone of her voice and the unmistakable fire in her bright blue eyes that she was wound up with more than just anger and possessive jealousy. With each word she spat out, he saw the pale, translucent skin flush between her collarbones and on the silky spot where the swell of her breasts dove beneath the hem of her knit blouse, and he felt his own body respond, the low, hard tugging below his navel growing almost painful as he felt his arousal strain against his slacks. Though he knew he'd never admit it aloud, the longer she ranted, the harder he got.

"Now, five years, ten years, however long from now?" she questioned him. "If it changes..how you feel about me. If it _ever_ does? Well, sorry to have to tell you this, Booth, but it doesn't matter. This is it. Do you understand?"

Booth's mouth opened, but he couldn't find any words to say to answer her. He knew what he wanted to say to her. _Come on, baby, _he beckoned her silently, swallowing thickly as he drank in her hungry stare. _You know you want it, lass. After all these weeks, you're starvin' for it just as much as I am. I can see it in__the beautiful blue mojo that's glittering in your eyes and humming around the edges of your skin, and I know you can feel it, too. That raw, tight feeling between your legs? You can feel it, hmmm? Each and every time you take a step, you feel it between those deliciously long legs of yours that I so fucking want wrapped around me now. Your beautiful blue fuse is lit, baby, and you're one good stroke or lick from going off like a Roman candle, huh? Damn, lass, you look good, and you know you want it. Those sexy fireworks of yours are gonna go off like the Fourth of July at the Capitol, and I'm so fuckin' ready for it. __You're hot and wet and so fuckin' tight that you need something to fill that emptiness you've been feeling. _A rattling hum sounded low in his throat as he felt a raw flash of desire crackle at the base of his spine and tingle through his limbs, stiffening his already-hard flesh. _Let me take care of that for you, _he silently urged her. _Let me fill you up. My cock's so stiff that my balls are gonna fall off if you don't let me start plowin' into you again and again and again. So, please, lass. Enough. We've done the serious stuff. Now, please...let's get to the epic fuckin'. Let me take you. Or, fuck, you take me. Take me, and fuck me. I don't care as long as my hard cock is in your wet pussy right now. You know you want it. Take it. Take me. For fuck's sake...please._

It was everything he could do not to reach up and pull her down on top of him, but he knew, as much as he wanted her, and as sure as he was that she wanted him, it had to be her that made the first move. So he said nothing, but rather watched her as she approached him with smoldering eyes.

"Come on, Booth," she groused. "For a century and a half I've been unable to shut you up, and now—_now, _after all these years—now you finally decide to bite that talented tongue of yours?"

Booth sat up a little, shifting into a better position on the couch so that he could see her more easily, even as the tight hitching in his balls gave way to a fuller, rounder ache as it seemed his whole body throbbed. "I thought you weren't interested," he grunted at her, raising himself up on his arms as he leaned back and jerked his chin upwards, exposing his thick neck to her as he swallowed, knowing the bobbing movement in his throat would catch her eye. "I figured you were just gonna...what was it you said?"

He glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, then brought his eyes down to meet hers again as he nodded, his mouth curved with a crooked, cocky grin as he snapped his fingers a a couple of times as if trying to jog his memory.

"Ohh, yeah," he said, his brown eyes glimmering with sarcasm. "I got it now. You were gonna throw me a pillow and one of the extra blankets and exile me to the couch so...what exactly? So that you could go into our bedroom and go in there and spread your legs on our bed while you rub yourself silly with that electro-diddly dildo of yours that you think I don't know you still have in your closet and buzz yourself off into oblivion?" He ran his tongue along the inside of his lip, then smirked as he watched her eyes widen at the revelation. Her mouth fell open slightly, but before she could utter a word, he laughed. "Really," he continued to taunt her. "Go ahead. I'll be fine out here. And, yeah, I do know you still have it. That's why I think I put an extra set of batteries in the drawer next to the bed if you need 'em that I know you thought I was just keeping hand for my universal remote, huh?"

Brennan hesitated for a second, hanging on to a breath and staring at him, open-mouthed, as she found herself surprised by him—something which itself was unexpected to her since she considered herself very observant in general and a keen observer of him in particular for the century and a half since she'd first met him. After a moment, she let go of the breath and leveled a firm stare at him.

"Is that what you want?" she snapped back, her eyes searching his for a hint, any indication at all, that there was any seriousness at all in his feigned indifference. She heard an echo on the edges of his speech but she wasn't sure if it was her own inner voice of self-doubt or the other third of her soul snickering from inside of him. Before she could shove aside that voice and continue, he laughed and cut her off.

"You know what I want," Booth growled with a wanton grin. "You know _exactly _what I want, Bones."

Brennan arched her brow sharply as she leaned into her hands which she'd propped on her hips in a defiant pose. "Is that so?" she huffed.

"Uh-huh," he grunted. "And I know you want it, too. You've wanted it for weeks. And the fact that some smart-assed little twit with small tits from California came traipsing around here thinking that she was gonna come and take it—well, that just makes you want it even more."

"Booth," she said, her voice dark and edged with warning. "You have no idea—"

"You think I don't?" he snorted. "I know _exactly _what you want. My cock...your sweet little hole...remember?" Booth raised his chin and leered at her with a twinkle in his eye, his lips pursed as he tried to bite back a self-satisfied smirk. His fingers tingled as he again yearned to reach out and pull her onto his lap so he could feel her warmth against him, and let her feel exactly how ready he was for her. He knew by the way her cheeks flushed that hearing the echo of his unsouled self ring through in his vulgarity made her body burn even hotter for him. "Mmm hmm," he murmured. "That's exactly what you want, and we both know it. Only question is, really, that I'm just not sure if you've got the fight left in you to come and take it."

He hesitated for a beat, blinking away the constant throb of lust that hummed between his legs, instead focusing on the way her bright eyes had suddenly turned two shades darker.A quick flash of azure illuminated their midnight-blue depths for a fleeting second, causing the space around her to glow for a moment as a familiar energy crackled against her skin and in turn made the hairs on Booth's arms stand on end in eager anticipation.

"You think I won't?" Brennan retorted with more than a touch of determined challenge clear in her voice. "Because, if you _really _think that, Booth, then (A) you don't really know me at all, and (B) you're just completely...fucking...wrong."

Her decision made, she rose to his taunting just as they'd both known she would. She never broke her gaze from his as she let her hands fall to the round metal button of her jeans. She quickly unbuttoned them before she grabbed the zipper's metal fastening and pulled it down in a tortuously slow manner as the only sound in the room besides Booth's grunty breathing was the _riiiippp_ of the zipper's teeth coming undone.

"Fuck me, Bren," Booth quietly groaned as the click of her unsnapping jeans and the metallic rip of her zipper sent a jolt of arousal searing down his spine. "Jesus, lass. I know I've been needlin' ya, sayin' how you should look at gettin' maternity jeans instead of just buyin' up a size since I know you hate the mommy-to-be-clothes, but...holy fuckin' shit, I'm sorry. Forget I ever said anythin' because I don't know what I was thinkin', 'cause...fuck, that's hot..."

She snickered at hearing his words, and the hint of a brogue that had begun to sneak into his voice the way it often did when he became aroused, thengrabbed each side of the jeans' waistband with both hands as she peeled the dark blue denim down the creamy smoothness of her legs. Kicking away the jeans, Brennan stood before him with her hands on her hips as the cream colored mesh and lace-trimmed panties served to both conceal and innocently tease the tempting curves it cloaked. Licking her lips, she waited a few seconds as she surveyed the sight before her.

Booth leaned back against the plush arm of the couch, one arm draped over the back of the sofa as the other reached for his belt and tugged at the waistband of his own slacks, trying to give himself a bit more room as he licked his lips in anticipation of seeing her and, more enticingly, feeling her envelop him in her slick heat. His fingertips tingled as his brown eyes, watery with desire, raked over the length of her legs from thigh to toe and up again, lingering long over the pale, soft skin at the junction of her thigh and pelvis, aching to slip his fingers under the lace trim of her panties, behind which the dark, reddish shadow of her curls, the sight of which made his nose tickle at the thought of inhaling the musky scent of her moisture. Booth's mouth gaped open and he took a deep breath as his splayed fingers wiggled over the fly of his slacks, and he tried to resist touching himself, even though his aroused flesh screamed to be touched and tamed.

Smirking at him, Brennan took her time as she sauntered over to the couch then climbed on top of him. She grunted as she reached for the tails of his dress shirt, jerked them out of his trousers, and ripped the shirt open, crystal clear buttons _pinging _in multiple directions as they fell to the ground, some of them clattering loudly to the wooden floor and others bouncing in a soft whisper on the thick pile of the red, blue and gold Oriental carpet that lay in front of the couch.

She raked her nails down the hard plane of his stomach. "The Mid-life Crisis," she muttered. "That stupid, stupid bitch Do you know what she said to me, Booth? Do you know what she actually had the fucking audacity to say to me?"

"Huh?" he grunted, his hazy eyes blinking a couple of times as he brought his gaze up from the tatters of his ruined shirt to meet hers again. After a few seconds, his mind caught up to what she'd said, and he frowned. "I don't care what the fuck she said, Bren," he told her. "She's...she's got nothing on you, lass. Just...don't..." He sighed and winced as his hitching groin again reminded him how many weeks it had been since he'd been inside of her. "Don't, Bren..."

Brennan growled before she responded, "No." She shook her head and then tilted her head as her jaw jerked upwards as she looked at him. "It's important that you know that bitch said she'd be fucking you before sundown, making you cry out her name because it was the only thing you'd remember by the time she was done with you." She stopped and gave him a wry look as she said, "Do you know what I told her?"

Booth hissed at the feel of her fingernails on the sensitive skin of his belly. "What?" he asked breathlessly, holding the tip of his tongue between his lips as he eagerly awaited her answer.

He knew she now knew there was little question but that he was just hers alone, and he was genuinely curious to known how she'd broken the news to Buffy that he was finally, forever and always, off the market. As the word _taken _whistled through the canyons of his mind, his eyes swiveled down and soaked in the sight of her body, its curves and curls scarcely hidden beneath the skimpy mesh panties, propped right over his own straining groin.

_Take me, _he sighed in relief, knowing that he was just moments from feeling her sink down onto him. _Oh, thank fucking God, take me. I'm so ready for you, lass. So, let's get to it. Let's get to that epic fuckin', hmmm? My cock is so hard...and I so want you. So you tell me whatever you want just as long as it means you get to taking me up inside you sooner rather than later. Mmmm..._

"I told her that she had a lot to learn if it took her that long," she hissed. "I might've possibly insinuated that there wasn't any possible sexual position, act, or kink in general that we hadn't engaged in at one point or another over the years, so that I wasn't all that intimidated by her."

"Mmmm," Booth rasped in a low, gravelly voice. A crooked smile broke his face at hearing her words. A part of him wished he'd been there to see her staking her claim to him, and that part of him responded to her words as he grew even harder at the sound of them. "And I'm thinking you've got a kink or two in mind to get me to cry out your name right, now, lass, hmmm?" He thrust his hips up instinctively. "Because if you don't, I think I've got some ideas."

"Damn fucking straight you're going to be calling out my name very, very soon," she said. "I think I'm going to make you beg, Booth. Then I'm going to make you come so hard, you're going to forget your own name."

"Oh yeah?" he coughed. with a lopsided grin. "Well, seeing as how it's been a long time since you've made me beg, that should be quite interesting, lass." His eyes narrowed then fluttered shut as he felt her grind her lace-covered body against his trousered erection. Swallowing a sigh, he opened his eyes again and said with a lascivious smile, "I wasn't sure you still had that kind of thing left in ya. I figured since it'd been a while, we'd take it slow 'n' easy."

"I hope you don't think motherhood is going to soften any of those sadistic tendencies I've been ignoring for more than a few years," Brennan said as she reached down, nimbly plucked his Cocky belt buckle free, thumbed the button on his trousers open, and pushed down his zipper. "Because, I can assure you, it hasn't, and it won't."

"It better not," he said with a wicked grin. "Because, to be honest, lass, I'd be lying if I said I haven't been hoping you'd eventually get around to pulling that bag o' tricks off the shelf, since I've sorta missed it, and well..." Booth grunted as he felt the warmth of her hands through the fabric of his boxers. "Remind me of some of those tricks you used to work me over with, hmmm?"

"Oh, right," she said, her laughter throaty as she shook her head. "I'm sorry, but did I miss something, Booth? Because I'd swear I was the one who had a rather shitty day because of one of your exes, and it not being the other way around. So, I think I'm the one who's calling the shots right now, and you should just be happy you aren't strung up and naked in the bedroom yet." She stopped and then ground her pelvis against his crotch again as she said, "Besides, I'm the one on top, remember?"

"Aye," he replied with a smirk, letting a bit more of his long-ago faded brogue bleed through. "I remember. And yeah. Sure. I think you deserve to be accommodated on account of the epic bullshit you've had to endure today." He watched her darkening eyes flicker at hearing his words. "So, what can I do to help, lass?"

"That's very kind of you, Booth," she smirked. Then, reaching into his boxers, she wrapped her fingers around his cock as she told him in a low voice, "And, as for what you can do to help me, there's only one thing you can do for me."

He swallowed as he tried to keep his eyes from rolling into the back of his head from the waves of pleasure he felt as she held him in her hand. "And...what's that...lass?" he grunted.

Brennan continued to stroke him in her hand as she said evilly, in a low and throaty drawl that she knew would drive him insane, "_Stay hard._"

"Ohhh, fuck," Booth groaned as he felt her slender fingers grasp him more tightly as she kept pumping him. "I don't think that should be a problem, lass. You know I've always been pretty reliable in that..." He coughed as she tightened her grip. "In that department."

He drew in a sharp breath and leaned his head back, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as he felt the sofa beneath him begin to spin, his awareness of the world around him slipping farther and farther away each time she dragged the loose, silky skin over the thickening length of his hard shaft. Jerking his hips up, he felt the tip of his cock brush against the soft knit fabric of her blouse, and he silently prayed that the point of her tongue would lick the droplets that were seeping from him. With each stroke, he felt his skin slide over his sensitive tip but he was frustrated not to feel what he really wanted to feel—the soul-sucking pleasure of her wet heat swallowing him whole.

"Ohh, fuck, Bren...you want to fuck me, then?" he half-moaned. "Hmmm, because if that's the kind of accommodation you're lookin' for, I'm all too willing to lend a hand. Ohhhh..._fuuuckkk._"

Somehow, he managed to lift a hand and sneak his fingers under her knit blouse. She pulled away from him slightly as she lost focus on what she was doing when he moved to let his fingers curl under the curve of her bra's underwire cup. She felt the ragged callous on the palm of his pistol-gripping hand brush across the smooth skin of her belly as his rough fingertips stroked along the underside of her breast.

"Damn," she heard him mutter. "These luscious curves...they're just everywhere now, aren't they..."

Suddenly, she tensed as the words from earlier that afternoon suddenly echoed at her.

"_He could never willingly want to be with a woman like you. You're not his type. Too tall, too...well..." Buffy's lips curled into a crooked smile as she cocked her head to the side and gave Brennan's rounded belly and full bosom a long, exaggeratedly languid look. "Much too curvy for his tastes...and..." Her eyes shot up and met Brennan's. "And definitely a bit too old._

Booth's hand slipped out again from underneath the underwire, and his fingers fanned out over the round curve of her belly. Brennan winced, still hearing the Slayer's hurtful words echoing in her mind as she twisted away from his touch, drawing in a sharp breath between her teeth.

"No—" she hissed, at him, unable to help herself as more hardness than she'd intended crept into her voice. She took a breath and tried to soften it as she pulled away from him slightly. "Please...don't."

"What?" he snorted, at first sure that she was back to teasing him again, but when her fingers loosened their hold on him, he knew the undertone of her voice was not one of jest, but one of wilting confidence. His amused brows suddenly furrowed, knitting low over his eyes as he looked up at her. "You don't want me touching you?" he asked, both confusion and concern creeping into his voice. "But you always used to love me touching you."

"I _do_," Brennan conceded, her voice growing weak again. "I love it when you touch me, Booth, I do. But, just—not right now, okay?"

His brow crinkled as he watched her, and he arched a dark, questioning eyebrow at her. "Why not?" he asked. "What is it, Bren?" She hesitated for a moment, remaining quiet, but the distressed look that marred her beautiful face was all the prompting that Booth needed to press her. "Come on, Bren. I thought we went over this. You can tell me anything."

She licked her lips, looking away from him, a tinge of pink coloring her already flushed cheeks as she sighed. "It's stupid," she finally muttered. "You'll think I'm being silly."

Booth smiled warmly, as he reached over and gently turned her face towards his. "Maybe," he admitted. "But, if I do, it won't be the first time, and it probably won't be the last time I do, Bones, so spill. What gives with the sudden case of no-touchykins?"

Letting out another long, slow exhale of breath, Brennan finally answered, "The last time we made love, I wasn't really showing much. I mean, yes, there was a clear indication if you got up close and inspected my abdomen for some tell tale sign of my pregnancy it was there—"

Booth pursed his lips sympathetically, looking down at her pregnant belly for a couple of seconds before bringing his gaze back up to meet hers as a smile spread across his face. "I know," he said, his voice low and gentle, his tone as smooth as velvet as the warm smile turned into a happy grin. "You look beautiful, lass. Every damn bit of you. I love the way you look. The way you're showing now? It's gorgeous." He splayed his fingers in the air, his hand hovering a couple of inches from her abdomen. "Maybe you think it's crazy or sentimental or alpha male of me," he said. "But I just want to touch it all the time. I mean it, Bren. You look terrific, and absolutely so fuckin' fuckable."

"Yeah," she sighed. "Well, be that as it may, I-I...I just feel like a fucking dirigible right now, so..."

Booth pressed his lips together as he watched the way she held her pretty mouth in a pout which, together with the uncertainty in her eyes, made her the most adorable thing he'd ever seen, the way his indomitably confident lover seemed to have grown suddenly insecure in her physicality. He felt a warmth spread through his chest at seeing her vulnerability, and he wanted to take her mind off of her worries.

"I didn't think you liked Led Zeppelin," Booth quipped, trying to make her laugh, then frowned a little as he saw no humor in her expression. "But alright, okay? Lower? I can do lower." He pulled his fingers away from the slight swell of her belly and let his hands come to rest on the round of her hips. "But just for the record, Bren? I've been loving this body of yours for a century and a half, lass, and you've never been fuckin' sexier than you are right now. You know that? Hmmm?" He paused for a beat, then added, "You have no idea how much it was killin' me to think you didn't want me, these last few weeks. _Especially_ now that your body's really starting to show. Or how many times I jerked off in the shower thinkin' about this." He fanned his fingers over her navel and rubbed her belly in a wide arc in spite of his earlier unspoken promise not to do so. "So fuckin' beautiful."

When he moved to caress her swollen stomach again, Brennan bit her lip as she felt the baby kick slightly at the touch, and she suddenly didn't feel very sexual. Sighing, she felt a bit deflated as she drew another deep breath and then let her hand fall away from where she'd gripped his shaft. "This isn't working."

"What?" he gasped, surprised at the loss of her touch and suddenly hurt to think that she didn't want the loving he so badly wanted to show her. "Lass, what's wrong? I, well...you gotta know that I think you look incredible, don't you? And you feel so incredible." His lips pouted a little and his eyes widened, giving him an almost vulnerable look as he begged her to believe him. "You can't possibly think that I don't want you, right? God, Bren—you have no idea how great you look or how much I want you," he almost pleaded with her. "So, please...tell me what I can do..."

"Look, Booth," she sighed. "I-I...know what you're saying is honest and true, but I can't help it if I don't feel very sexual when seeing the Mid-Life Crisis made me realize I'm twice the size I was three months ago, and I'm only going to get bigger. Then, if you're just reminding me of the baby, Booth...that...that's not—" She paused and sighed again as she moved up off of him. "I'm sorry," she muttered. She turned so that her back was facing him, and she felt her body to start to melt into his when he stood up and pressed her back against his chest.

"Shhhh," he crooned to her softly. He placed his hands on her shoulders and nuzzled into her hair. "Come on, lass," he murmured into her hair, his fingers squeezing her shoulders softly as his warm breath tickled her scalp. "Don't be like that, please," he said, gently nipping at her earlobe with his lips. "You look beautiful. You've never looked more beautiful to me than you do right now, Bren. And you have no idea how much I want you right now. I do. I swear I do. So, please..."

"I can't do this..." She let out in a strangulated whimper of frustration. "You have no idea how fucking pissed at myself for feeling like this, but I do. I'm sorry. But, I just can't—"

"Yes, you can," he said, his voice low and soft as it vibrated in her ear. He took a deep breath, breathing in the smell of her hair, her sweat, and the faint remnant of her vanilla-scented perfume as he brushed his lips against the silky lobe of her ear. He closed his eyes and smiled against her cheek, knowing he had to turn the dial up on his charm to help her along, to help her get where he knew they both wanted and needed her to go.

"You said you were going to make me beg," he said with a grin, voicing his desire as a rumbling growl in the back of his throat that he knew she could feel and hear. "You know, before? You know you're the only woman in the world who could make me beg. You always were, and you still are. You know that, right?" He plucked at the skin in front of her ear with his lips and felt a faint shiver pass through her. "I know things are changing, and I know you had a rough afternoon, huh?" He kissed her jaw with a feather-light touch of his lips. "But you always say you're so good at compartmentalizing, Bones. So how's about we put those killer compartmentalizing skills of yours to work, lass? Hmmm?"

He pulled away slightly, holding her at not quite arm's length as he let his warm, glistening brown eyes skim along the edge of her face, down to her chin, then up again to meet her eyes. Tilting his head to the side, he raised his brows in a pleading look that carved deep creases in his forehead as he let a soft smile curve his lips.

"That horrible stuff this afternoon?" he nodded at her charmingly. "Set it aside, okay? Just for a little while. Put it in a box and set it on a shelf, then close the closet door and turn out the lights so we can move on to more important things. Don't let it own you, lass. Hmm?"

He slid his hands down to her upper arms, curling his fingers around her biceps, squeezing her arms gently as he turned his head a little, placing a soft kiss on the warm spot of skin right behind her ear.

"Listen to me," he said, letting his hands slide down further so that they rested on her hips. "Are you listening?" he asked, not waiting for an answer as he exhaled a breath into her hair. "You're so fucking sexy, woman, you drive me out of my fucking mind."

He pressed a kiss against the nape of her neck, in a spot he'd discovered decades before was one of her most sensitive. He nipped at her again, gently, in that same spot as his hands cupped her hips, pulling her ass against his groin so she could feel how hard he was.

"You feel that?" he asked her, letting some of the gentleness in his voice fall away and be replaced by a bit of the lewder edge, hoping to draw her back into a mindset every bit as sexy as he found her to be. "Do you feel how crazy you make me?" He pressed his fingertips into her warm, springy flesh as if to punctuate his words. "It's probably a fuckin' blessing in disguise that you're spending more time in the lab these days. Because I don't know if I could keep my hands off of you if I had to look at these..." He moved one hand so that he could palm her ass before he moved his hands back and squeezed her hips softly with a low grunt. "Or look at this sweet, rockin' ass all day..." He thrust his hips into her, rubbing his cock against the cleft of her ass. "You're hotter now than you've ever been, lass. That's a fuckin' fact and anyone who says different is a complete and utter fuckin' moron who doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground, mmm'kay?"

Brennan couldn't help but chuckle as she shot him a knowing look. "Well," she replied, "I do believe it when you say what you say about my ass since you've always been unusually enthralled by it. Remember?"

"Huh," he grunted with at her, his voice thick with want as he choked out a response. "I remember." Booth squeezed her fleshy hips again and rubbed his lips against the shell of her ear. "Ya know, Bones. Even after all these years...you've never actually given me a straight answer about that one."

Her already-racing heart rate increasing yet again, she turned her head to the side and blinked her heavy-lidded eyes at him in coy, feigned confusion even though she knew exactly what he meant. "Which question?" she asked.

Booth smirked at her with a small shake of his head. "Come on, Bones. You know what I'm talkin' about, so tell me." His smoldering brown eyes narrowed to glimmering slits as he licked his lips suggestively and wobbled his head a little. "Was I the first one?" he asked her, his earlier smirk turning to a large grin as he jerked his chin upwards and encouraged her to answer. "To take you like that? Hmmm?" She smiled at him, but remained quiet, causing him to chuckle and prompt her again. "Was I? Tell me."

Unable to help herself at his boyishness, she chuckled a bit as she smiled at him. "Well, I can definitely tell you that you've always certainly thought you were," she murmured softly, finally feeling some of the anger that had colored her mind for so long begin to fade away and shift into something else—a pleasurably warm if barely yet discernible pulsing of want that went beyond the intense waves of lust she'd always felt for Booth.

"Heh," he chuckled. "Hmmm, yeah I have because I don't think I've ever been inside anyone or anything that was that tight, lass. You came pretty fucking hard, and so did I." He hummed in his throat at the memory. "So, yeah...I've always loved this sweet ass of yours. Even, you know, after L.A., when I came here..." His voice trailed off briefly as he blinked a couple of times. He still struggled for a way to articulate the strangeness of what had happened to him, having lived one life and then having had that human life cleaved to another, completely separate life after which he was one person with two pasts. "You know...but before I remembered everything, there was something about your ass. I couldn't keep my hands off it. Remember? When we were 'just partners' how I'd always put my hand right here?" He moved one of his hands around and let his fingers skate over the curve at the base of her spine, just above her ass. "I love this place. I've always loved it, even when I didn't realize why."

She felt his hand occupying its usual place, palming the small of her back, and for a moment, she felt a calmness, a comfort in the ordinariness of it. After a few seconds, as his hand warmed that place where it had been so many countless times before, Brennan felt a flash of awkward worry. His hand was where it usually was, resting at the base of her spine, protective and yet possessive, patient and yet subtly demanding more, and she suddenly felt a difference, a shift that caused a wave of sadness to wash over her. His touch and his desire were the same as they'd always been but the difference was on her end of things—_she_ was not the same. Her body, which for a hundred and fifty years had matched him in every way and met his body's demands at every turn, was hindered by the changes the pregnancy had wrought on it.

She squirmed against his touch and became quiet for a moment and then leaned back into him for a minute. Sighing softly, she said, "I have to tell you something, but you can't get...well, don't just...don't take it personally, okay?"

Booth's cheeky grin wilted somewhat at her words. "Okay," he said hesitantly, becoming slightly confused since Brennan had seemed all but ready to fuck his ever-living brains out not ten minutes earlier, but now seemed to be hesitating again. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"You know I want you," she said in a wistfully quiet sigh. "I _always _want you...it's just...I-I..." She swallowed once and then looked him straight in the eyes. "It's hard for me to compartmentalize, okay? One second I feel like I could fuck you nonstop for five days straight, and it wouldn't be enough. But in the next second, if something happens like the baby kicks or my body doesn't move like I want it to because of my pregnancy, I suddenly feel completely unsexual. So...I-I just...you're going to have to help me a bit, okay?"

"Yeah, of course," he said quickly. His chest ached at hearing the confidence he'd tried to bolster suddenly deflate again as she confessed the source of her insecurity. "You know I love you," he told her. "And you know I want you very, very much, Bren. You know that. So let me help you. Whatever you need, just tell me, okay? It's yours. Just tell me."

"The hormones going up and down," she began tentatively, almost as if she was struggling with the words as she tried to explain. "It...with everything, it's just going to take me a bit longer than it would for me to match you like I normally do...if I even can." She tilted her head so that she was looking over her shoulder as she stared at him wide-eyed and asked, "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Hmmm," he murmured. "I know why you're worried, lass, but I really think we'll be okay. We've always managed after all...found a way to make it work, right?" He paused, his tongue lolling at the corner of his mouth as he said, "Maybe it's time for me to show you some of _my_ magic powers, then." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "You know, my magic fingers or, if you want, my magic tongue." He licked his lips appreciatively as he tilted his head and smiled charmingly at her. "Just like always, they're all at your service, lass."He paused thoughtfully for a moment, then added, "See, 'cause we both know how much you like it when I unleash my own magic on you. You know you love it when I go to town on you." He slid his tongue between his teeth as he saw a flicker of interest in her eyes. "I think I can make you feel so good that you'll soon be begging _me, _lass."

"Mmmm," she murmured at him with a small smile. "And, you think those magic powers of yours can get me to answer to your question, I suppose?"

Booth grinned somewhat sheepishly. He averted his eyes, hoping to draw her out, to entice her into joining him in the reminiscence and letting the memory itself, or the banter along the way, disarm her of her worries. Raising his brows as he put on an awkward expression, his forehead creased as he gave her an awkward smile. "What was the question again?" he laughed, deliberately making a poor attempt to feign ignorance.

"Oh?" she chuckled. "You don't remember? Well, I guess that's a moot point then, and I don't have to answer it."

"Oh yes, you do," he snickered, his eyes brightening as he was pleased to see her taking the bait and joining the game. "Tell me," he said with a teasing grin. "You know you want to, lass."

"Oh, whatever, Booth," she chuckled. "You think you can get an answer from me to that question after all these years, by all means, feel free to try. But, I think it's safe to say that I have a better shot of getting you to answer if I was the first one to stretch you out in a very _particular _way before I'll answer your question about you and my ass. So, yeah."

"Aww, fuck," he muttered, his voice dropping low and becoming somewhat distant as he remembered the night she'd strung him up from the rafters of her Cheapside home in London.

He grunted, his eyes narrowing as he recalled the way she'd kissed and nipped her way across his chest, biting his nipples in a way that drove him wild, then worked her way down, teasing his cock before she slipped her fingers between the cheeks of his ass and penetrated him, prodding and stroking him to the very edge of release before leaving his balls aching and unsatisfied. Booth blushed at the memory, a part of him embarrassed at the idea that he'd let her do such a thing—a kink he'd heard referred to as 'pegging' long before he'd realized that, in another time and place, he himself had enjoyed the act.

"God, that was hot," he admitted, his voice rough as he leaned in and reached around, sliding his fingers along the cleft between her folds and feeling the damp evidence of her desire through the mesh of her panties as she let out a pleasing half-gasp, half-grunt. Resisting the temptation to dip his fingers under the waistband, he instead teased her through her panties as he began to draw tiny circles over her clit. "By the way, I don't think I'm up for that sorta thing now, if you're thinking about trying to get your way with me that way, working me over like you did that night," he told her. "But it sure was hot when we did it." Booth turned his head and pulled her earlobe between his lips and sucked gently as he continued to work her over with his fingers. "Mmmmm," he murmured, his lips vibrating against the shell of her ear as he felt her sighs grow louder and louder "Ya like that, lass?"

"What do you think?" she managed to reply as she leaned back against him as her knees wobbled.

"Yeah," he said with a lusty growl. "I remember the question now." He snickered, his hot breath warming the gentle curve at the base of her neck. "Soooo," he crooned. "Did I pop your ass-cherry that night, lass? Hmmm? You sure felt tight, even though I worked you over a bit to stretch you out before I shoved my cock into your hot little ass. Tell me. Was I the first to take you that way?"

"Mmmm," she repeated, her voice almost a soft purr as she felt her body begin to respond as he talked dirty to her and continued to rub her through the rapidly increasing dampness of her panties. "Oooh, fuck, Booth...Mmmmm...oh, _fuck..._ahhh...and what...would you—_ohhhh_—say if I told you that...fuck me..._mmmm_...you weren't?"

Booth smirked, letting his tongue dart out and lick the delicate shell of her ear. She sighed softly, and he pulled his hand away, smiling at the way she whimpered againat the loss of contact, but then rewarded her by finally sliding his fingers underneath her panties, drawing his fingers into the slick cleft between her folds at last. She moaned as she felt his finger briefly dip into her, rimming her as she gasped, then withdrew and returned his attention to her hard clit which throbbed painfully as she ached to come.

"_Booooooth_," she groaned. "Stop teasing me."

"Hmmm?" he teased her. "What's that, lass? Was that an answer that you had for me?" Smirking at her response, Booth suddenly slowed his circles and lightened his touch, knowing from the way she sighed that she wanted more, not less.

"Not...telling..." she stubbornly grunted. "_Ohhhh...fuckkk..._"

He chuckled, expecting nothing less from her as he continued to work her over with his fingers. "Sorry, Bones," he laughed. "That's not the right answer if you want me to stop t teasing you."

She muttered something unintelligible that caused him to laugh.

"If you want me to stop teasing you, Bones, all you gotta do is tell me if you'd let other men fuck you up the ass before I did, hmm?" He tapped his finger on her clit, then pulled his hand away. "Is that what you're telling me?"

Brennan shot his an irritated look before finally answered. "What do you think?" she rasped, her lips pouting and her brow furrowed as she frowned petulantly. She reached for his hand, trying to urge him to touch her again, but he slipped out of her grasp.

"I would say..." He tried to suppress a laugh. "I would say you were a fucking liar, lass. I blazed a nice fuckin' trail that night, right up into your ass. And yeah, I'm pretty sure that was virgin territory before I got there and fucked you up like I did, so why don't you just tell me I'm right. Because it was, wasn't it?"

She smacked her lips as a surge of wet warmth pulsed strongly between her legs as she could only think of her want of him as she muttered, "Kiss me again and maybe I'll tell you."

He squeezed her hip and twirled her around to face him. She looked at him with a smile, her eyes gleaming with want and amusement as she dared him. Emboldened by the challenge in her gaze, he quickly brought his hands up to cup her jaw as he pulled her in for a kiss**. **He covered her mouth with his, sliding his tongue along the edge of her lips and demanding entrance once more, which she promptly granted this time as their mouths fused together in a deep, albeit somewhat brief kiss.

"Tell me," he said as he pulled his lips from hers and returned his hands to rest on her curvy hips.

She opened her mouth in a partial o-shape, but merely clucked her tongue, laughed, and shook her head. Not one who'd ever dealt well with teasing, Booth's retaliation was quick. He brought one of his hands up the side of her thigh, using his palm to skate across her smooth skin. He then reached down and inched his fingers under the elastic leg band so that the spring mesh of her lace trimmed panties no longer concealed her skin from him. He dugs the pads of his fingers into the softness of her ass and then brought it around, careful to avoid her belly, as he concentrated on dipping his fingers once more into the crisp curls that crowned her wet folds.

"Tell me," he purred as his balls hitched at the feel of her silky arousal, glad to know she was finally ready because his own body ached with need, and he wasn't sure how much longer he could wait. "Come on, lass...tell me," he crooned at her.

She sucked in a hiss of air before she barely managed to ask in a nearly breathless voice, "Is it really important for you to know?"

Booth cocked his head to the side and then grinned at her with his trademark cockiness that made Brennan want to both throttle him and fuck him senseless. "No," he admitted. "I just wanted to know if you'd tell me or if I'd have to make you beg first. But it's a pretty fucking delicious memory to think about, in either case, isn't it?"

"You know already," she moaned against his touch, her body tensing emptily as she at once enjoyed and hated his teasing. "You know—"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I do know the answer, but I still like hearing you tell me," he chuckled, withdrawing his fingers again. "And I especially like it when you tell me after you've begged me a bit." He paused, relishing the power she trusted no one else but him to have over her before he softened as he looked down at her. "And, speaking of begging," he said with a lopsided grin she knew always signaled a concession on his part. "You know that night you—well, when you turned the tables on me?" She blinked, shooting him a deliberately blank look, as she remained silent. He rolled his eyes, and for a few seconds they steadily held one another's gaze. At last, he decided that since she had given, so would he. Booth's serious look crumbed back into a toothy grin as he admitted, "You did something to me that nobody had ever done before that night, lass. Mmm hmm. That's a fact. Never before and never since." _Like a lot of things that's gone on with you, _he added silently. He arched an eyebrow as he watched her reaction. "And, while I'd never admit it to another soul, just between you and I, lass, I liked it. Like I said, I'm still not sure if I'm up for doing that again anytime soon, but..." His voice dropped into a conspiratorial register. "Back then? I gotta admit, it felt pretty fucking amazing."

Brennan pressed back against him and then said with a laugh, "And now you know one of the reasons why I had so much fun needling you about sex when we first started working together. Calling you a prude?" She chuckled again as he squeezed the grip his hands had on her hips in response. "Mmmm...yes, that was very fun to do because I knew you weren't. I knew all along that you are many things, Booth, but you're not a prude."

"Right," he said, smiling at her backhanded way of complimenting him on his sexual creativity and adventurousness. "I've never been a prude—even before..." He glanced to the side, his brow furrowing as he still puzzled over how to describe the past he had and the man he was before Brennan merged with the very different man she'd known him as for 150 years. "Even before I met you," he explained. "I wasn't a _prude. _I just liked to keep private things private, and..." He smirked, his eyes flickering as an unspoken memory of a night spent in the backseat of a 1972 Dodge Challenger with a prom date played in his mind. Shrugging away the memory, he snickered and said, "And as for all the things we have done over the years—and I think you're right, you know, that there's not much we _haven't_ done—well..." He remembered taking her against the wood-paneled wall of their sleeper car on the train from Calais to Berlin, pinning her hands above her head as the rolling motion of the train punctuated the wild rhythm of their fucking, the train's horn drowning out the sound of her cries as she came. "Well, I was at a serious disadvantage. Not only are you smarter than me, but you remembered everything, and, until fairly recently, I didn't remember anything. So you were just toying with me." Booth's brow quirked sharply as he narrowed one eye and feigned a stern look before he stuck his tongue out and wiggled it teasingly. "You were a cat, and I was your favorite ball of yarn. You've always liked that, huh? Being in control like that?"

"Yes," she laughed. "I did...I still do—" He gave her a playful growl and hooked his forefingers under the waistband of her panties, sliding them around to the back of her waist where he stroked the smooth curve just above the cleft of her ass, his touch soft at first but then firmer and more insistent. Brennan heard him mutter something about her being a 'bad girl,' then looked up and saw the lust smoldering in his eyes as his jaw shifted forward with a silent but unmistakable demand. "So," she said, prompted by his touch. "Does that mean since I was bad that you might have to punish me for my misdeeds?"

"Mmm-hmmm," Booth murmured, palming the soft globes of her ass and pulling her taut against his groin. "Fuck, yes, it does. You were very wrong to throw those things at me, you naughty little witch. Especially that fucking heel of yours. The first one really hurt."

Her brow furrowed and her body stiffened a bit at the reference to their prior argument. She was quiet for a minute before she finally answered. "I was angry, Booth. Very, _very _angry."

"I know," he said, his voice sober and yet gentle as he quickly tried to keep Brennan from going too far afield lest they have to start their foreplay all over again. "And under any other circumstances, I'd say I'd need to make you see the error of your ways, but—" He narrowed his eyes before he continued, "Because I think you've already received your punishment for the day, I say we let things lie on that one huh?"

Brennan's brow knit as she struggled to understand his reference. "Punishment?" she repeated. "What do you mean, Booth, that I already received my punishment? I don't know what that means."

He voice was more gentle still as he said softly, "Your punishment today, lass, came in the form of someone who was blonde, petite, pushy, and mouthy as all hell. So given that...naww, I don't think you need any more punishment for the day." He paused, the gentleness that had been present in his voice just a few seconds before quickly disappearing as he teased her again. "Now, tomorrow?" he grunted as he leaned in and kissed her neck. " Well, tomorrow's another question entirely..."

"Don't push your luck," she grinned as she felt his warm breath on the crook of her neck. "Mmmmm..."

"Shush, woman," he said, nudging her back in the direction of her couch. "Let's not talk about luck," he added. "I don't think we really need to since we're both gonna get lucky...right...about...now." Booth urged her back towards the couch, guiding her past where he'd fallen earlier to the more spacious chaise lounge that sat at the far end of the piece of furniture, following her with his eyes as he quietly toed out of his shoes and socks, kicking them to the side before he stepped out of his trousers, which had been gaping open and hanging loosely on his hips since she unbuckled and unbuttoned him earlier.

Brennan turned around and grabbed a fistful of his shirt in each hand as she tugged him toward her. "You're awfully cocky," she said, moving her hands as she grabbed at the plackets of his ruined shirt. Pulling them apart to expose his chest, she said, "You've always been so fucking cocky." She felt her hands begin to tremble as he growled approvingly of her actions.

"You love it," Booth said with a sly grin as her fingers slid under the open shirt and along his sides, her thumbnails scraping over his nipples as he sucked in a sharp breath. His own need was tenting his plaid boxers and he knew she saw it, but not wanting to leave any doubt in her mind about how badly he wanted her, he jerked his hips forward, pressing his rigid arousal against her belly. "You fuckin' love it, lass. Admit it, mmmm?"

"Fuck," she muttered, tugging once more at his shirt before he wriggled out of it with a frustrated grunt as he yearned to feel her warm, silky skin against his. She watched the muscles shift under his skin as he tossed the ruined dress shirt to the floor, and her eyes flickered with admiring want_. _"What do you think?" she asked.

"Come 'ere," he groaned, closing his big, veiny hands around her round hips as he pulled her against him, then gently turned her around and pushed her towards the couch. "Always ruinin' my good shirts, you are, lass. Especially the French blue ones."

"Mmmm," Brennan replied with a smirk. "And we both know you fuckin' love it," she mimicked his Irish brogue. "Admit it, mmmm?"

"Whatcha makin' fun o' me for?" he snickered back, his dark eyes, so full of lustful want for her, lightening for just a split second in playfulness. "You can tease me all you want, but we both know you fuckin' love my Irish ways. Just hearin' a good western brogue makes you wet. Come on, lass. Just admit it. You miss it."

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't," Brennan mocked with a dramatic roll of her eyes. "Either way, if I wouldn't answer that other question without being coerced, why do you think I'd do it now? Hmmm? Even if I did like it, I sure as hell wouldn't tell you now, would I?"

"You are such a pain in the ass," he snorted, gently shoving her towards the couch again. "Such a little liar and such a pain in the ass...my lovely pain in the ass."

Brennan arched an eyebrow as she laughed and then jutted her chin in his direction, "So does that mean you don't want to go to the bedroom?"

"Nope," Booth said with a shake of his head. "If we wait that long, you might flip again and go off on another rant, and my poor aching blue balls can't take another half hour of coaxing you back down or else they're gonna fall off. So, here's how it's gonna go, lass. I'm gonna fuck you right here, right now, nice and hard. And I'm not taking any chances, no sir. I'm fucking you crazy senseless right now."

Narrowing her eyes, she chuckled, "Need I remind you it was that impatient mentality that resulted in you knocking me up at some point between Halloween and All Soul's Day last fall?"

"Huh," he grunted. "When you say it like that, it makes it sound like said knocking up was something I imposed on you intentionally." He laughed. "My recollection is that the only thing either one of us was thinking about was my cock pounding into that tight, wet hole of yours and so you were a willing participant in that process, Bones. Each and every time, I think."

"I was hoodwinked," she said as she bounced down and sat on the couch. Extending her hand, she crooked her finger towards him and gestured for him to come closer. "You gave me the puppy dog eyes and the grin and put some spell on me. That equals being unduly influenced in my book, remember?"

"I'm going to plead the Fifth on that one, okay?" he said with a grin as his eyes skimmed her curvy form admiringly before she moved. "You know, that's a lovely bit o' lace there, Bren, but I'd be glad to rid you of it..." He knelt down on the edge of the couch and leaned over her, tugging at the waistband of her panties with an almost boyish impatience. Sighing in mock exaggeration, she lifted her ass up slightly as she braced her weight with the palms of her hands. She then _tsked _him, "Always so impatient you are."

"Deal with it," he snickered as he curled his fingers over the waistband of her cream-colored mesh panties and peeled them down her legs. "Or else I'm afraid I'm going to have to do very bad things to you, Bones. I mean, yeah, we'll both enjoy them, but they're still gonna be _very _bad things."

"Oh?" She laughed again as she added, "And here I was thinking you said I had a stay of punishment until tomorrow?"

"Oh, you do," Booth deadpanned at her, brushing his forearm across the bottom of her belly's curve as he brought his hand back up to her hips. "But, I'm afraid my generosity doesn't extend to the rest of your clothing—especially to that damn bra of yours. I'm serious, Bren. You really don't need to do the whole lifts and separates thing. You never ahve. Your beautiful, delicious tits don't need no Miracle Bra to make them shine." He made a humming sound in the back of his throat and cocked his head to the side as he licked his lips and admired the way the warm light of the room reflected against the sweat that glistened in the cleft between her breasts. "And let there not be any doubt, Bren—your tits have never, _ever_ looked as good, as delicious and totally suckable as they do right now. You get me sprung—hard as fucking iron—God, just looking at your tits these days. And thinkin' about fuckin' you, and seein' those big, juicy tits of yours swingin' to and fro' while I'm fuckin' you..." His voice trailed off and he made a _nnnnngth _sound as he brought his hand up and rubbed his forefingers together in anticipation. "I mean, damn, lass. I think I could suck those sweet little nipples of yours all damn day and—"

Her brow furrowed a bit at his words, as she flushed a bit at his praise, and then she tilted her head and said in a soft voice, "Humor me?"

"I always do that," he deadpanned again. "Why would I stop doing it now just because we're about to commence on some epic fucking, lass?"

"Booth," she growled as she let her ass fall so that she was once more still seated on the couch, her panties still in place. "Come on. Please? Be serious for a minute, okay?"

His eyes widened as he realized her humorous tone of voice had stiffened. His eyebrows flew up, creasing his forehead as his lips pouted, and he was quite sure he'd said something terribly wrong again. The ache in his balls gave way to an aching in his chest as he heard a wistful insecurity creep back into her voice. "What is it, lass?" he asked softly.

"We've worked fairly hard to get me fairly worked up...in a good way. I don't want to waste that by getting distracted again, okay? So...be as ruthless as you want to any offensive articles of clothing below my waist, but anything above...I want to keep them on, okay?" she asked him.

Booth blinked, annoyed at himself for walking right into the morass of her uncertainty and vulnerability. Although he intellectually knew _why _she felt this way, at some level, he still struggled to understand how she of all people could feel this way considering how much confidence she showed throughout so many other parts of her life. Although it didn't make sense, he'd already told her in a dozen ways how beautiful she was and how much he wanted her, and still she seemed to waver with fragile vulnerability. He knew it made more sense to humor her than to try and persuade her otherwise. do He wanted to make her feel safe, to do whatever he could so she would let her guard down and let him show her how beautiful she was to him.

"Sure," he said, his wilted grin suddenly brightening again as, his decision made, he reached once more for her panties. She lifted her ass again, and he shimmied her panties over her hips and down her thighs. "That's better," he chuckled as he tossed them to the side. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yes," she nodded with a small smile. "Why?"

"Because I..." Booth's voice trailed off and his brow knit up and down in thought. He remembered her tossing and turning in bed over the last few nights, complaining about how her lower back ached. Knowing she might not be comfortable on her back, and knowing himself well enough to realize that it would be damn near impossible to keep his hands off her chest if she were on top, he thought for another moment and grinned as the solution finally dawned on him. "On your knees," he whispered.

"I knew it," she chuckled at him. "You'd think that after over a century and a half, I'd be wise to your tricks by now. You said you were going to do very bad things to me, and this is what you're going with, hmmm? Really? Are we really going with that one again, sweetness? Because I thought you said something about _both _of us getting lucky."

"Not like that," he snickered. "Turn over and get on all fours..." He glared at her in mock annoyance. "Come on, lass," he said with a quiet plea clear in his voice, slightly swatting her bottom with an impatient growl. "I don't wanna talk anymore," he groused. "And neither do you." The sight of her bare ass, soft and smooth and round, reduced his voice to a primitive, gravelly rasp. "The time for talkin' is done, lass," he said, his brogue coming back to him as his eyes darkened to pitch with unslaked lust. "It's time for fuckin'—right here, right now...and hard. So stop yer incessant yammerin' and dilly dallyin', and let's get to that hard fuckin', okay?"

She shot him another look, this time punctuated it by sticking out her tongue, and wagging it at him, but then compiled. Booth reached back with one hand and slid his boxers off his hips as she watched her assume the desired position.

"Mmmm," he murmured as he wriggled out of his boxers and took his place behind her. "Yeah, that's it. That's good...so fucking good."

Fisting himself in one hand, he reached between her legs and, brushing his hand against the skin of her inner thigh, more as a form of warning than as a caress of its own, brought his hand up to her damp folds. He parted them with his forefingers, drawing his fingers along the length of her cleft and feeling the slippery moisture that left no doubt in his mind that she was more than ready for him. He withdrew his fingers and cupped her hip with the same hand, leaning forward as he pressed himself into her, slowly parting her folds as he felt her tight warmth envelop him.

Brennan sucked in a long breath of air through her clenched teeth as she felt him start to move within her.

Booth craned his head back and let out a sigh as he lost himself in the feel of her. No matter how many times he made love to her, the feeling of suddenly being inside of her never seemed to be any less amazing or novel than it was the very first time he'd known her this way, a century and a half earlier. He slid into her, slowly at first, letting his mind let go completely as he allowed himself to drown in the sensation of being swallowed up by her.

After a couple moments of the silence between the between punctuated only by the occasional chorus of rough grunts, soft sighs, and dogged pants, Booth slowed their motion as he leaned in, covering her back with his chest as he brought his lips towards her ear.

"You're fighting me," he whispered. "Don't."

"No—" she grunted in response. "No..."

"_Yesssssss_," he told her.

"I'm...not—"

"You are," he heaved between breaths, bracing himself with one arm on the back of the chaise lounge as he rolled his hips and thrust into her. "Can't...fool me...Bren...never...me."

Squeezing her eyes shut, she felt his hand move from where it rested on her hips and smoothed the fleshy part of his callused palms across the side of her pubic bone, increasing his pressure as he went. As he moved in what seemed like an excruciatingly slow progression, she whimpered a bit as he was quite careful to give her just enough force so that she noticed a difference in how she felt when he wasn't touching her that way.

"_Boottt-hhhhh,_" she cried softly as she arched her spine and craned her head back as she struggled to see his face.

"What?" he whispered again, taking the chance to nip the softness of her earlobe, pulling the exposed skin between his teeth as he ran the tip of his tongue over the small bit of flesh before he let it go.

"Stop," she sighed. "Ohhhh. Stop that..."

"You...really...want...me...to...stop?" he asked, punctuating each word with a slightly faster, harder thrust, pulling himself out half way before he plunged back into her silky depths with a renewed vigor. He squeezed her hip, pressing his fingers hard into her flesh as he let his thumb slip underneath her knit top to stroke the smooth skin along edge of her ribcage, a place that had always pleased and fascinated him—so soft and yet so firm, so ordinary and unappreciated yet, for her, surprisingly sensitive. He began to slide his whole hand up under her shirt when he remembered her admonition to keep everything below her waist. He arched his head back with a faintly frustrated sigh, then grunted and rolled his hips back, jerking into her a bit harder and deeper than he had just moments before.

"I-I..._ohhhhh_," she murmured when he let one his index finger move up so that he was rubbing the top of her swollen clit in small circles while he used his thumb to coast around one side of it in lazy semi-circles. "Not...fair."

"Nope," he agreed with a smirk. "Not at all."

Clenching his jaw a bit, as he fought to hold on long enough to keep control of the situation so that he didn't come before her, he sucked in another gulp of air as he felt her lean back into him slightly.

"Better," he grunted as he felt her start to relax against him. "But...not...enough."

Focusing his limited rational thought in keeping a firm pressure applied to her clit as he teased her with his index finger, when he felt her begin to press her pelvis back against him, he knew she was finally close to letting go.

"Ohhhh," Brennan whispered. "Ohhhh...I feel...I feel...I can feel you."

"I know," he groaned with a bit of a laugh. "You're...supposed...to."

"Oh, God, Booth—" she cried softly. "God..._ohhhhhhhhhhh_..."

"Break for me," he coaxed her. "Break. Trust me. I'll catch you. I won't let you fall. Break, Bren."

He wondered if, a moment later, he had known what her body was doing before her mind did. The slight crackling of blue energy that had become part and parcel of what was long ago normal whenever they had sex spiked around them. Almost as if setting the stage for his own plummet, he let his fingers fall away from her swollen clit as he fixed his attention on pumping into her as he felt himself let go almost at the exact moment she cried out. Jerking against her a few times, he closed his eyes as the electrostatic around them seemed to both bind them as it simultaneously heightened their senses, which were, in that moment, filled with nothing but the taste, scent, sound, and feel of one another. As he slid into her one final time, he felt a sense of relief and gratitude wash over him even as he pulsed into her and he murmured her name.

After another minute, Booth felt his strength give out, and he fell back onto the couch. He slipped out of Brennan as she fell forward, bracing her upper body on shaky arms as she once more began to become aware of the world around her. Blinking several times, Booth concentrated on forcing air into his lungs as his pounding heart started to slowly not sound quite like a booming bass line of concurrent thunderclaps reverberating in his ears.

Licking his dry lips, he swallowed once and then couldn't help but smile as he said in a voice that was slightly raw, "Bones?"

He saw her take several large breaths before she, somewhat unceremoniously shifted so that she was seated in front of him. "Huh?"

"You...okay?" he wheezed.

She nodded her head, the slightly glazed look that he'd always loved seeing in her normally keen eyes softened as she stared at him in scattered focus.

He couldn't help but laugh as he moved to roll off the couch, only hesitating for a second to wonder if his legs would keep himself upright, before he smiled and walked towards her.

"Come 'ere," he grunted as he reached down and swept her up into his arms with a heavy grunt.

"Hmmm?" she asked before she realized what he was doing. "Wait—" she told him as he grabbed at her sitting form. "Booth, no...your back—"

"It's fine," he said. "Trust me. It'll be right as rain as long as you do what you're thinking about making me do in our bed and not on the couch."

Unable to stifle a small yawn, she smiled as she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned against him as he started to walk towards their bedroom. "I'm not sleepy."

"Liar," he grinned as he kicked open the bedroom door and brought them both to the bed. "Remember, Bones...you can't fool me—ever."

She laughed a cheerful laugh that made Booth rather pleased to know that she could feel that lighthearted given how angry she'd been just an hour before.

When they were situated on top of the duvet, Brennan still clad in her top and bra and a clean pair of panties to make her feel more comfortable, he pulled a light suede covered microfiber fleece blanket that Brennan kept at the foot of their bed draped over them. After a couple of minutes, Brennan snuggled against his warm naked body with a sigh of contentment escaping her lips as she shifted slightly on her side.

"Booth?" she eventually murmured sleepily.

"Hmmmm?" came the equally sleepy response after another moment.

"Stay with me?" she asked, her voice small and more vulnerable than anyone ever heard from her as she spoke to him, the plea clear in her voice despite the groggy tint that it had taken on. "Don't leave me..."

In that moment, neither one really knew if she was talking about that specific moment or something more abstract. But, it really didn't matter since the answer was the same in either case.

"Never, Bones," he answered confidently as he tightened his hold around her body as he let out a single sigh of contentment. "Not in this world, the next, or anywhere in between. Never."

* * *

Sometime later, Brennan's eyes blinked open as a heavenly familiar scent made her nose twitch.

"Mmmmm," she murmured groggily. "I know...that smell," she said as she shifted in bed, having rolled onto her back at some point in her sleep. "Unless I'm dreaming, and I don't think I am."

Lifting her head, she looked around and then smiled as she saw Booth standing next to the edge of her side of the bed. Not certain how much time had passed since she'd dozed off, she knew it had to have been a fair bit of time since Booth had apparently snuck out of bed, pulled on a fresh pair of boxers, and adjourned to the kitchen to procure sustenance.

"Hungry?" he blinked at her with a small smile, even though they both already knew the answer.

"Yes," she said as she yawned once more and then moved to scoot into a sitting position. "Thirsty, too," she added with a matching smile at him as she nodded. "But, you knew that."

"Yup," he grinned as he moved the steaming blue stoneware mug he held a couple of inches closer. "Smell good?"

"Fuck yes," Brennan grumbled as she frowned and then shot him a look. "And, you're evil."

"Yeah," Booth agreed. "But not for a while now." He gestured with the cup. "Want some?"

"You know I do," Brennan responded with a frown. "Enough so that I'm giving serious consideration to tying you up again so I can steal that mug from you."

"No need," he laughed at her as he extended the cup closer to where she could reach it. "Here."

She arched an eyebrow as she stared at him suspiciously, her eyes darting back and forth between his stare and the mug before she sighed. "Don't you know better than to tease me right now, Booth?" she groused. "Especially after the day I've had?"

"I'm not teasing you," he chuckled, as he offered her the cup again. "I really made it for you, Bones, so here—take it."

Sighing, she shook her head as she said, "I know that smell. That's the real stuff, not the fake shit I've been drinking for five months. So, nice try, but you're still evil for teasing me, so I'd stop while I was ahead if I was you unless you want to see what the view looks like in our bedroom from the rafters—"

"First," Booth clucked at her, cutting off what he knew might be the start of another Brennan rant that he was keen to avoid. "We don't have any rafters in here, so nice try, but no dice."

"I'll get some put in, and then tie you up," Brennan muttered. "It's not that hard and won't take me that long."

"Second," he smiled at her, ignoring what he knew to be an idle threat from his grumpy wife. "Come on. I really did make it for you. Extra milk, extra sugar, just like you like it."

"Booth," she almost whined at him. "Come on. Please. Stop teasing me. You know I can't have that. The doctor said—"

"That you could have 200 milligrams a day if your BP's stayed low, and it has, Bren. So, come on. I'm not teasing you, I promise. One twelve-ounce cup of Irish Breakfast tea isn't going to kill you or hurt the baby," he said. He then gave her a toothy grin, "Besides, we both know that blueberry scones taste better with the tea while it's hot, so—"

"You have blueberry scones?" Brennan suddenly asked, her decision changed as her demeanor shifted when she reached for the mug so quickly that it surprised Booth. "Where?"

Reaching behind him, Booth laughed as he swiped a white cardboard box tied with white string from where he'd set it up the edge of the bed. Brennan's heart melted a bit when she saw a single daffodil had been tucked in between the twine on top of the box.

"Real tea, blueberry scones that look like they're from the bakery on M Street—"

"They are," Booth said as he waggled his eyebrows as he handed her the box. "Picked them up at lunch."

"And, a daffodil?" Brennan smiled as she reached for the box with her free hand. She set it on her lap and then plucked the flower free from its confines. Lifting it to her nose, she inhaled its almost indiscernible scent and smiled. "You know, if this is a part of some grand scheme of yours to get laid again, it'll probably work," she nodded at him.

Booth laughed and said, "Good to know." He smiled and felt a warmth in his chest at seeing her, relaxed and content, her eyes soft and her forehead free of lines, after the turmoil of that afternoon.

Savoring a small sip of the tea, she set it down on the nightstand as she then gestured for him to join her in bed. Walking around to the other side of the bed, Booth plopped down next to her as she started to work the twine free. A few moments later, after Brennan had devoured two of the three blueberry scones he'd gotten for her, and half of an almond bearclaw, she smacked her lips and then handed him the box.

"Here," she said, her voice filled with a type of self-disgust at how much she'd consumed. "Oh, please. Take it away. I'm done."

Looking at the remnants of the box, Booth quirked an eyebrow at her as he laughed, "You sure? I think you might've missed some of the stuff, you know. Just FYI."

Scowling at him a bit as she licked her fingers, she said, "Don't tease me, Booth. Especially when this is your fault. I've eaten more sweets in the last two trimesters than I have in over a century combined, and I blame your genetic contribution for that fact."

"Oh, ho," he told her as he waggled his finger at her in protest. "Now wait just a cotton pickin' minute. You've been scarfing down baked goods after sex for as long as I've known you, so you can't blame that on me or the baby. Admit it, Bones. You've just got a wicked sweet tooth. Always have and probably always will."

Brennan scowled at him and then said, "You know, I don't think I like you very much."

"Not like that's the first time you've told me that," Booth grinned as he set the box down between them and leaned in to kiss her. "But as long as you still love me, I think I'll find some way to cope."

Brennan melted a bit as he kissed her and was just starting to get enthusiastic about things when he pulled away from her. "Hey!" she muttered. "Come back here. I'm not done yet."

He laughed, and was about to say something when Brennan quickly rolled over and reached for his lips with hers. After another minute, when they at last pulled apart, she said, "I love you."

"I love you, too," he murmured, the fire of want in his belly suddenly flaring again as he reached over and cupped her jaw in his big hand, closed his eyes and gently pulled her lips to his again for another deep, grasping kiss. "Mmmm..."

Again their lips pulled apart and, this time, Brennan rolled away a little, opening a space between them as she took a breath and gave him an apprising, narrow-eyed look.

"You know she'll be back," she said grimly. She knew from the way his heavy-lidded brown eyes blinked that he knew exactly who she was referring to, but for some reason, she felt compelled to clarify who she meant. "The Slayer."

Booth breathed a heavy sigh and rubbed his eyes, swallowed hard and said in a low, rumbling voice, "I know she will."

"I mean, it's not like I didn't make it even easier for her, since I gave her one of your business cards, but—"

"Wait," Booth said, cutting her off as he closed his eyes and shook his head in confusion. "So, wait—after all that, you actually gave her one of my business cards?" He reached up and raked his hand through his messy hair as he tried to make sense of what she'd done. "Why would you want to do that, Bren? If what you want is for her to stay the fuck away from us, and me in particular?"

"Well," Brennan began to explain. "I was a bit emotionally off-kilter when I did that because she'd just tried to stake her claim to you." She noted a faint tingle in the hinge of her jaw as she felt a swell of emotion rising along with the bile in her throat. "Like I've been worried about her doing for years, Booth. She tried to do it. That's why she came here. She had this whole sob story about how she just wanted to check on you to make certain you were okay. But, I know better. She wants you..she wants you back. She's like a child with an old toy that she has no interest in until someone else notices it and starts playing with it. She wants you back. I just know it...and I guess that I knew as much as I wanted her gone, she wouldn't go away unless she actually talked to you...so, I gave her your card and figured once you and I had had a chance to talk—"

Booth quirked a sharply bent eyebrow and stared at her. "Uh-huh," he grunted. "Really.'

"Talk...fuck...whatever, Booth," she chuckled before she became sober once again. "Anyway, it's like we decided...no more unilateral decisions. What affects you, affects me, and vice versa. So, I figured this way, we'd at least know what way she'd be coming at you since I know she would just keep trying to find you if I didn't open up at least one avenue of contact for her...even if I don't like sharing my toys."

Her comment hung in the air for a long moment before Booth shrugged and a sardonic grin spread across his face. "So the truth comes out," he said, his voice edged with sarcasm as he absently rubbed the stubble on his chin with the edge of his thumb. "You still consider me a toy, don't you?" he asked her with a snicker as he saw her flush lightly and smile. "That's okay, Bones. You told me that very first night back in London that you don't share your toys, so I knew from the first go that I was always gonna be your plaything." He raised an eyebrow and waggled it, then shot her a lewd grin and added, "But since I liked the way you played, I was okay being your toy. And it's kinda hot when you get all _rawrr _and possessive like that." He stopped and gave her an appreciative nod. "While you know I love you in red and black, and you _definitely _can rock the wicked blue mojo, every now and then green looks pretty damn good on you, too."

She smiled at him again as she nodded. "Yes, well, I don't share well," Brennan told him. "I never have, and I never will. Especially when it's you that we're talking about me having to share."

The lascivious smirk melted from Booth's face as he heard the gravity in her voice. "You know you'll never have to share me," he said, his voice deep and serious. "You're the only woman I'll ever really love, Bren, and the only one who's ever really loved me like I loved you. You know that."

"I _do_ know that, Booth," she nodded at him. "I do...it's just that...well, she told me how what you had some sort of transcendent cosmic significance or whatnot." Each one of her words came slowly, labored over and spat out as if she was gnawing each one of them off of a length of tough leather. "She went on and on about how what you and she had was timeless. That you'd never want to spend your life with someone like me."

At hearing her words, Booth's heart sank. "You know that's not true," he said to her, reaching his hand out and touching her forearm with a lightness, a tentativeness that spoke as deeply of his empathy as any words could. "She's nothing to me. I..." He swallowed again and took a shallow breath. "I went to her when I couldn't figure out if there was a place for me in your life, but it was all a mistake. That time, when we turned our backs on each other—it was a mistake. We hurt each other, but we realized our mistake, right? And we got past it. And we're good now, you and me. Buffy's nothing. A mistake, a bad memory—one I wish I could erase."

Brennan blinked, her jaw hardening as she rolled her eyes and shook her head. "You can't, Booth," she said with a dark edge to her voice. "You can't. I told her you didn't want her, you know. I told her you'd been mine since long before her grandparents' were the twinkle in someone's eye, and as much as she thought she knew about you, she knew _nothing. _I think I made it quite clear to her that I wasn't going to give you up without a fight, and that only seemed to goad her on even more in her want of you."

"I know it would," he said, curling his fingers around her wrist. "And I think you knew it would which is why I'm guessing that you said that.."

"Yes," Brennan said, a crooked smile curving the corners of her slender lips. "I know _you _know that, but I had to make sure _she _knew. So, while I didn't plan on doing it, I might've _accidentally _given her a brief demonstration of a fraction of what I'm capable of when someone tries to take from me what's rightfully mine." Her pale eyes flashed bright at the memory of how she'd used her powers to silence the Slayer's rolling, hateful rant.

"Did you now?" A proud grin spread across Booth's face as Brennan nodded. "I just bet you did," he said. Then, with a pout of his lips, he asked, "How come I'm never around when you whip out the blue mojo to put some other woman in her place when she comes challenging your claim on me? Because I'm tellin' you, that has to be the hottest fucking thing _ever._" He quirked his eyebrow and gave her a suggestive shrug.

"You almost were," she said. When she saw the puzzled, blank look on his face, she sighed and rolled her eyes. "Please," she said in a sarcastic manner that made her seem both adorably sexy and annoyingly irritating when she rolled her eyes at him. "Come on, Booth. Don't tell me that you don't remember." His brown eyes widened as she shook his head and opened his mouth to answer. Brennan cut him off with an exaggerated _pfft _before she clarified, "It happened that night we got the callout to the train derailment and Dr. Saroyan was there, remember? It was the first time I'd ever met her and she was barking out orders to everyone including me, looking at you with fuckhither eyes and making comments about how great you look out of a suit."

"Oh I remember," he said with a grin. "That look you gave her that night could've cut glass. You're always talking about guys comparing dicks, but the way you two alpha females were prancing around that night." He brought his hands up and curled his long, thick fingers into talons, clawing the air as he gritted his teeth and hissed. "Meeeeoww. Holy catfight, Batman." Booth laughed at his own joke, shrugging away the look Brennan shot him at that moment. "And as for the other, well—you've seen me in everything from my birthday suit to union shorts, high-waisted worsted wool trousers and a tailcoat to that awful periwinkle blue leisure suit I had back in the 70s. You know I know how to wear clothes, no matter what I'm wearing, though if I had my druthers, I'd wear jeans and a leather jacket all the time." He hesitated, then gave her a wry grin. "Except for Sundays, when I like to go commando and wear just sweats and a T-shirt. If I have to get dressed at all."

She refused to make reference to his teasing comments and instead studied him for a serious moment before she spoke once again. "You know," she said at him with her blue eyes narrowed. "That night? If I ever was tempted where Cam was concerned, I probably came the closest to kicking her ass with a little bit of that 'blue mojo' you like seeing me wield so very much."

"Hey," Booth snorted, "as long as I'm not the one gettin' hogtied, that would've been pretty damn awesome." He bit back a smile, then fell quiet for a moment as he thought about that night at the derailment. "I had no idea about any of this..." He made a vague circular gesture in the air between the two of them. "I mean, you and me, and what we are, and were, and who we've been for each other all these years," he explained, fumbling a bit to find the words to explain the strange path his life—and lives—had taken. "But if I had," he said with a laugh as he blinked away the feeling of oddness he still felt sometimes, "and you'd have done that, that would've been hot as all fuckin' hell."

Brennan smiled knowingly. ** "**Well, if you were actually around when any of these insipid little bitches trolled around looking for you, it would probably be far worse for them," she said. Something electric flickered in the depths of her blue eyes as she pursed her lips and gave him a knowing look. "You do still remember what happened the last time you were around and one of your dalliances shot off her mouth about you, _to _you, in front of me."

Booth gave a subtle nod and let go of her arm, bringing his hand up to the side of her face and tucking an errant strand of her dark hair behind her ear. "Yes," he said with a reassuring smile. "I remember. It's not like that's something that's easy to forget, lass." It was the last time he had seen Brennan's dark, lethal side unfurled in its full glory to exact retribution on the vampire woman, Helen, who had not only defrauded Brennan and her father, but had staked her claim to Angelus at a time when Brennan, though she was unwilling to openly acknowledge it at the time, had begun to regard his attentions as less of a convenience and more of an entitlement. Helen's entreaty to Angelus had done little more than to inflame Brennan's ire, and after staking the Italian vampiress, Brennan had proceeded to assert her claim to Angelus' affections and leaving him with little doubt as to who was the foremost among the women in his life.

She shrugged away from his touch and frowned. "Booth," she said in a low, sober voice. "That time in our lives when we were each willing to sit by and watch the other one go off with someone else? It's _over_. You're mine. And hell will metaphorically freeze over before I let you go again. I love you, and I'm sure as fuck not letting you go ever again. You know that, right?"

"I know," he said with a smile, reaching his hand out to touch her round, firm belly with the very tips of his fingers. "But listen. If and when Buffy comes back here looking for me, don't worry. I'll handle it. I'll take care of it. I promise. I'll set her straight, okay? So you don't need to worry because..." He looked down at his hand and the gentle swell of her pregnant stomach. "I love you, Bren, and nothing—not in this world, or in any other—will ever make me let you go. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes," Brennan said, her voice husky and thoughtful. After a moment, some of her seriousness melted away again and he saw her blue eyes twinkle with laughter. "But, Booth, the real question is: do I love you enough to take you for a ride when my new Mustang convertible gets delivered in a couple weeks?"

"Huh?" Booth's ears suddenly perked up, his eyes widened and his brow creased as a broad, toothy smile seemed to nearly split his handsome face in two. "Mustang?" he asked. "What are you talking about, Bren?"

"I suppose I should tell you now since you're going to find out anyway," Brennan said. "The reason I wouldn't let you have both the black and the red Viper? Well, it's because if you got both, I wouldn't have any place to park the Mustang when it comes in."

"You bought me a Mustang?" Booth grinned at her, his brown eyes shining in clear excitement. **"**Aww, lass, tell me you went for the Premium package, with the 4.6-liter V8 and the five-speed manual transmission and sport-tuned suspension. Because that's a fucking bad-ass ride, Bren." He grunted approvingly and said,"God, if I didn't love you already, and if we weren't already married, I think I'd do it right now."

"Hold on there," Brennan _tsked _him. "I didn't say I bought _you _the Mustang."

"But, you just said—" Booth's face twisted into clear confusion.

"I said I _bought _a Mustang," Brennan said, the laughter clear in her voice as she nodded at him. "But, I never said I bought it for you, Booth."

"Then, huh?" Booth's excitement had suddenly evaporated into a lost puppy dog look."Who did you buy it for if you didn't get it for me?"

However, not one to be cowed by such a look when it was a Mustang Convertible on the line, Brennan said, "That's not going to work, Booth. So, cut it out—"

"What?" he countered, the very picture of innocence as she scowled at him. "Hmmm, lass?"

"It's mine," Brennan said. "The color's called Deep Impact Blue, for God's sake."

"But, I like the color blue," he protested with a pout clearly evident on his face.

"No," Brennan said with a shake of her head. "It's mine. You've got the Viper."

"We can get the black one," Booth suddenly offered, his voice brightening as he counter-offered. "Black Viper for both of us, Blue mustang for me. It's a win-win for everyone."

Shaking her head, Brennan said, "If we get the black Viper, then, maybe...just _maybe_ I'll let you drive the Mustang," Brennan told him. "But, it's still mine, Booth."

"Bones—" he muttered, a certain petulance creeping into his tone as he realized from the way her square jaw ticked that she'd dug her heels in and that no force in the universe, natural or otherwise, could move Brennan off dead center once she'd set her mind to something. "Seriously? Aww, come on."

"Best offer, Booth," she said with a shake of her head. "Because there's absolutely nothing you can do or say that'll make me change my mind about this one."

He quirked an eyebrow at her as he said, "You sure about that, lass?" He licked his lips, holding his tongue between his lips for a moment as his eyes shimmered back at her with a dark, smoldering look. "You may have thought I forgot about it, but I didn't. You still haven't received your well-earned punishment for your naughty shoe-throwing antics earlier, hmmm? It's best that you don't forget what Scarlett O'Hara said: 'Tomorrow is another day.' Hmm?"

Brennan didn't even have time to yelp before he lunged at her and set about to seeing if she was right or wrong.

* * *

**~The End~**

* * *

**A/N2- **So, there we have it. 8 of 9 in this epic storyline arc is now in the can. We'd love to know people's responses were if they care to share. As ever, thanks for reading. And, stay tuned...in the not too distant future, we'll be posting the final story in this saga, set about five months after this piece ends. Lots of familiar faces will be making an appearance, but if you want to know more hints, please feel free to check out any of the Twitter feeds ( WitchyBren - Angel_Booth - magicmaxkeenan) or _dharmamonkey's account for more details. The story is actually completely written. It just needs to be edited, so we're hoping to post the next chapter within the next few weeks. Until then, take care.~


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